GuidesEU procurement

How to find EU tenders

The EU publishes more public procurement than any single market on earth, and a UK supplier's right to bid for much of it survived Brexit. The obstacle is rarely eligibility. It is that above-threshold and below-threshold work live in completely different places.

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In one line: EU public contracts above the EU thresholds are published on Tenders Electronic Daily (TED), the procurement supplement to the Official Journal of the European Union, while below-threshold contracts stay on each member state's own national portal — so full coverage means TED plus the national systems of the countries you sell into.

Key takeaways

TED is the single official source for above-threshold EU notices, in every official language, and it is free.
Below-threshold contracts — the majority by volume — never reach TED. They sit on national portals such as BOAMP and PLACE in France, TenderNed in the Netherlands, the Plataforma de Contratación in Spain and eTenders in Ireland.
UK suppliers retain access to much of the EU market through the WTO Government Procurement Agreement and the procurement chapter of the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement. Access is not universal, and the covered entities and thresholds are what decide it.
Since October 2023, TED notices use standardised eForms, which made structured filtering far more reliable than the old free-text forms allowed.

How to search the EU market

The order matters. Start with the source that covers 27 countries at once, then add national portals only for the markets you can genuinely serve.

1. Start with TED

Tenders Electronic Daily publishes above-threshold notices from every EU member state, plus the European Economic Area and a number of other participating countries. It is free, it needs no account to search, and it supports saved searches and email alerts once you register.

Search by CPV code and country first, then narrow. TED's language coverage is a genuine advantage: notice metadata is standardised across languages, so a CPV-led search finds Italian and Polish notices you would never have found by keyword.

2. Use eForms fields rather than free text

Since October 2023, EU notices are published in eForms, a standardised structure that replaced the older free-text notice forms. That change made fields such as procedure type, contract nature, buyer classification and lot structure reliably machine-readable.

In practice this means a filter built on eForms fields behaves consistently, where a keyword search still depends on how a particular buyer phrased a title in their own language. Build the search on the structured fields and use keywords only to narrow.

3. Add national portals for below-threshold work

Below the EU thresholds, publication is a matter of national law, and those notices do not reach TED. In most member states, below-threshold work is the larger part of the addressable market for an SME.

Each country runs its own system, in its own language, with its own registration. There is no EU-wide aggregator of national portals, official or otherwise, which is precisely why cross-border SME participation stays low.

4. Check your access before you invest in the market

The UK acceded to the WTO Government Procurement Agreement in its own right after leaving the EU, and the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement adds procurement coverage beyond the GPA baseline. Between them, UK suppliers can bid for a substantial share of covered EU procurement on non-discriminatory terms.

Coverage is defined by entity and by threshold, not by goodwill, so check whether the specific buyer and contract type fall within it. Separately, some contracts carry national security, defence or language requirements that make a UK bid impractical regardless of eligibility.

5. Plan for language and local presence

Most national procurements require submission in the national language, and machine translation of a specification is adequate for triage but not for a bid. Budget for professional translation, or for a local partner, before committing to a market.

Consortium bidding with a local supplier solves language, references and often the local-presence expectation at once. For most UK SMEs entering an EU market, that route is more realistic than bidding alone.

Where EU notices are published

TED covers everything above threshold across the union. Below it, each country runs its own system — the largest markets are listed here, and every other member state has an equivalent.

Country or service	What it covers	Where it stops
Tenders Electronic Daily (EU-wide)	Above-threshold notices from all EU member states plus EEA and other participating countries, in standardised eForms, in every official language. Free search and email alerts.	Above threshold only. No below-threshold notices, and tender documents usually sit on the national or buyer-side system the notice links to.
France	BOAMP carries national notices including much below-threshold work; PLACE is the central state e-procurement platform where documents and submissions sit.	French-language submission is the norm, and many local authorities use regional platforms rather than PLACE.
Germany	The federal service portal aggregates federal notices, alongside the e-Vergabe platform for federal procurement.	Germany is federal: Länder and municipalities run their own Vergabemarktplätze, so no single portal covers the market.
Italy	Consip's Acquisti in Rete carries the MEPA electronic marketplace and national framework agreements; ANAC holds the national contract database.	Regional and municipal buyers frequently use their own platforms, and registration on MEPA requires an Italian digital identity or certified signature.
Spain	The Plataforma de Contratación del Sector Público is the central publication point for state and much regional procurement.	Several autonomous communities run their own platforms, and submission is in Spanish or a co-official regional language.
Netherlands	TenderNed is the national portal, and unusually close to comprehensive: Dutch authorities are required to publish national tenders through it.	Dutch-language notices dominate, and below-threshold work is often invitation-only.
Ireland	eTenders is the national portal for Irish public sector opportunities, including much below-threshold work, and it operates in English.	Irish authorities also use framework agreements heavily through the Office of Government Procurement, so notice flow understates the addressable market.

Three ways to cover the EU market

Nobody covers all 27 national systems well. The realistic question is how many markets you actually intend to serve.

Approach	What it does well	Where it stops
TED plus one or two national portalsTED, and the portal for each market you are committed to	Free, official, and entirely adequate for a supplier focused on one or two EU markets with a local partner in each.	Does not scale. Each additional market adds an account, a language and a taxonomy, and nothing joins the notices to award history.
Pan-European alert aggregatorsMercell, Tenders Direct, Tender Service, EU Supply and similar	Aggregate TED with a varying set of national portals, often with translation, so one feed covers several markets.	National coverage differs sharply by vendor and by country. Ask which specific national portals are ingested before assuming a market is covered.
Market intelligence platformsTussell, Stotles, Skim	Add award history and buyer behaviour on top of the notice feed, so a market can be assessed before you commit to entering it.	EU depth varies widely between vendors, and several are UK-only in practice. Verify the coverage claim against the countries you care about.

Where Skim fits

Skim reads TED alongside every UK portal and more than 10,000 national and buyer-side systems, so EU and UK opportunities arrive in one ranked view rather than two monitoring habits.

Award history is read the same way across both markets, which is what makes an entry decision possible: before bidding into a new country, you can see who has been winning that work, at what value, and how concentrated the market is.

The honest limit: no platform covers all 27 below-threshold national systems evenly, and any vendor claiming otherwise is overstating. Skim states its coverage per country rather than implying the corpus is complete.

Common questions

Where are EU tenders published?

Above the EU thresholds, on Tenders Electronic Daily (TED), the procurement supplement to the Official Journal of the European Union, which covers every member state and is free to search. Below threshold, publication is governed by national law, so those contracts appear only on each country's own portal — BOAMP and PLACE in France, TenderNed in the Netherlands, the Plataforma de Contratación in Spain, eTenders in Ireland, and so on.

Can UK companies bid for EU tenders after Brexit?

For a substantial part of the market, yes. The UK acceded to the WTO Government Procurement Agreement in its own right, and the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement adds procurement coverage beyond that baseline. Access is defined by which buying entities and contract types are covered and by the applicable thresholds, so check the specific procurement rather than assuming either universal access or exclusion.

Is TED free to use?

Yes. Searching TED costs nothing, and registering gives you saved searches and email alerts at no charge. What TED does not give you is below-threshold notices, translated tender documents, or any view of who has been winning similar contracts.

What changed with eForms?

Since October 2023, EU notices are published using eForms, a standardised structure that replaced the older free-text notice forms. Fields such as procedure type, contract nature and lot structure became reliably machine-readable, which makes structured filtering across languages far more dependable than keyword searching.

Do I have to bid in the local language?

Usually. Most national procurements require submission in the national language, and machine translation is fine for triage but not for a scored response. Budget for professional translation, or bid as part of a consortium with a local supplier, which also tends to resolve reference and local-presence expectations.

Sources

Thresholds, notice requirements and portal addresses change. Check the primary sources above before relying on a figure. Last reviewed 11 August 2026.

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