Where an EU company may bid, and what says so
The single market covers 21 of them, the WTO procurement agreement 11, and a trade agreement with the EU another 19. For the other 75 there is no instrument at all, and that is the answer most exporters are missing when they pick a market.
The single market · 21
The single market, and the countries that adopted it without joining. A company established in the EU bids on the same terms as a company established there, above the thresholds under the directives and below them under the Treaty principles.
The WTO procurement agreement · 11
Parties to the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement. Each one filed annexes naming the buyers, the services and the value thresholds it opened. The right is real and its edges are in those annexes.
A trade agreement with the EU · 19
A trade or association agreement with the EU that carries a public procurement chapter. Narrower than the single market and just as annex-bound: read the chapter before you plan around it.
No reciprocal agreement · 75
No reciprocal instrument. Whether a foreign firm may bid is left to national law and to the tender documents, which can require local registration, an agent or local content. Being a fellow WTO member changes nothing: the procurement agreement is separate and opt-in. What does not depend on any of it is procurement financed by a development bank or a UN agency, bought on the funder's rules rather than the country's, and each of these 75 pages names the 9 funder channels this site reads every day.
Tell us the markets, we send the map
Name the countries you are weighing up. You get back where public tenders are published in each one, how much of that we read every day, and what an EU company needs before it may bid there. An email, not a call.
Frequently asked questions
01In how many countries may an EU company bid for public contracts as of right?
Of the 126 countries whose procurement sources this site maps, 51 are reached by a named instrument: 21 through the EU single market or the European Economic Area, 11 as parties to the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement, and 19 through a trade or association agreement with the EU that carries a public procurement chapter. The remaining 75 are covered by no reciprocal instrument, which means national law and the tender documents decide.
02Does WTO membership let a company bid for another member's public contracts?
No. Public procurement sits outside the WTO's general obligations. The Agreement on Government Procurement is a separate, opt-in agreement with its own, much shorter list of parties, and each party opens only the buyers, sectors and thresholds it wrote into its own annexes.
What this does and does not say
Access is always relative to where you are established, and the company in view here is one established in the EU. A firm in another country reads a different table. This is not legal advice: the instruments named grant what their annexes list, and the tender documents of a particular procedure can require things no agreement overrides. Where a country sits under “no reciprocal agreement”, that does not mean a foreign firm cannot bid, only that nothing obliges the country to let it. The number beside each country is how many sources this site has mapped publishing its public tenders, which is a separate question from whether you may bid for them.