Where tenders draw a single bid

Against the Union's own target

The Commission's reform milestones put the share of single-bid procedures below 15%, counted above and below the EU thresholds. Above the thresholds, where the Official Journal can be counted directly and on one definition for everyone, not one of the 27 member states was under it between January and July 2026. The closest are Finland at 17.2%, France at 18.8%, Ireland at 20.6%. The only country in this table below the line is Switzerland at 12.2%, which is not in the Union.

Read that as the half of the picture it is. The target covers procedures below the thresholds too, and those are more contested: France reads 17.5% in its own register against 18.8% here, and Portugal 13.8% against 41.3%. A member state can be far from the line here and closer to it once its small contracts are counted. What this measures exactly is the large end, everywhere, the same way.

By country

Of the countries with at least 1,000 lots, Poland is the thinnest at 57.5% and Switzerland the keenest at 12.2%. Read every share next to its lot count: the smallest countries here carry a few dozen lots, which is enough to pass the bar and not enough to describe a market. The 26 countries above a thousand lots each open a page with their own CPV divisions and codes.

Who won them is the other half. From January to September 2026, companies registered in another country won 3.8% of the award notices naming a winner in the 27 member states, and Ireland's 19.3% is the highest among the larger markets: cross-border public procurement, country by country, with the single-bid share over the same months beside it.

Two registers, counted separately, agreeing

France publishes the same field in its own national register, the DECP, for every notified marché rather than only those above the EU threshold. Counted there, on a different file, a different population and a different pipeline, 17.5% of open procedures drew a single offer. Counted here, on what France published to Brussels, 18.8% of 26,902 lots did. Portugal reads 13.8% in its own register against 41.3% here, and the gap is the threshold: TED carries the large contracts, and the small ones a national register also carries are more contested. Neither number checks the other, and that is the point of publishing both with their universes named. The French register, code by code · the Portuguese one.

The United Kingdom appears in the table with 60 lots because it left the Union and stopped publishing here. That is a residue and not a market, and the share beside it should be read as one. It publishes to Find a Tender now, which carries the same field, so the British question is answered on the British register, with awards made without a call for competition excluded as they are everywhere else on this site.

By CPV division

A notice counts towards a division only when all of its CPV codes sit in that division, which 134,240 of 215,323 notices do. The rest are left out rather than split by a guess.

Code by code

The 961 CPV codes carrying at least 30 lots, from a notice that named exactly one code so the lot could be attributed without inventing the join. The 100 where a single bid is commonest are listed here, and each opens its page in the CPV tree, which states the same share for every code. All 961, in this order, are in single-bid-europe.json with their mean and median, and, to read, in single-bid-europe.md.

Written in the country's own language

For 15 of these countries the same count exists as a page written in the language the market is bid in, rather than translated into it. Nobody else publishes the figure in any of them. Until now each was reachable only from its own row above, which is one link into a page that answers a question a whole country asks.

• Licitaciones con una sola oferta en Españaes
• Gare con una sola offerta in Italiait
• Licitații cu o singură ofertă în Româniaro-RO
• Veřejné zakázky s jedinou nabídkou v Českucs-CZ
• Upphandlingar med ett enda anbud i Sverigesv-SE
• Ausschreibungen mit nur einem Bieter in Österreichde-DE
• Ausschreibungen mit nur einem Bieter in der Schweizde-DE
• Aanbestedingen met één inschrijving in Belgiënl-NL
• Ausschreibungen mit nur einem Bieter in Deutschlandde-DE
• Przetargi z jedną ofertą w Polscepl-PL
• Aanbestedingen met één inschrijving in Nederlandnl-NL
• Δημόσιοι διαγωνισμοί με μία προσφορά στην Ελλάδαel-GR
• Обществени поръчки с една оферта в Българияbg-BG
• Javna naročila z eno samo ponudbo v Slovenijisl-SI
• Javna nabava s jednom ponudom u Hrvatskojhr-HR

How this is counted

The source is TED, the EU Official Journal, and the field is BT-759, the count of submissions received, which eForms requires on every contract award notice. BT-760 says what each count counts, and it has ten values in this period: only the total is read here, never the electronic, SME or non-EEA subsets, because they overlap and an SME sending an electronic bid appears in three of them. 164,798 of the 215,323 award notices published in the period carry a total, and the unit is the lot, not the notice: a notice can award many lots and each is a contract bid for on its own. A country, division or code is only listed above 30 lots, so a share always rests on something. Two kinds of lot are dropped as impossible. 78,874 declare zero tenders received on a notice that awarded a contract, which cannot happen: Romania says it on 18.8% of its lots, Italy on 17.0%, France on 14.9%, Poland on 1.8%. Reading those as total absence of competition would be the loudest thing this file could be made to say and a false one. And 24 report more than 500: one Irish notice reports 2,416,436 tenders received and a French one 629,812, which are amounts typed into the count field, cut at the same place the French pipeline cuts them. TED carries procurement above the EU thresholds, so this is the large end of every national market and not the whole of it. Harvested from the TED search API on 2026-09-08. No euro figures appear on this page on purpose: a TED value mixes framework ceilings with contract values across twenty-seven legal regimes.