Who wins abroad: cross-border contract winners in the EU single market

Only a minority of disclosed public-contract awards in the EU go to foreign suppliers — but Luxembourg stands out at 41%, and the Poland–Hungary corridor dominates cross-border flows.

The single market promise vs reality: what the award data actually shows

The European single market was built, in part, on the promise that a supplier in any member state could compete for public contracts anywhere in the union. The disclosed award data from TED (EU Tenders Electronic Daily) tells a more complicated story. Across all buyer countries with sufficient disclosed data, the overwhelming majority of reported contract awards go to domestic suppliers. Luxembourg is the sharpest exception: among the 2,773 awards where the winner's country was recorded, 1,145 — fully 41.3% — went to a supplier based abroad. No other country in the dataset comes close. And the single busiest cross-border corridor in the entire dataset is not one most observers would predict: Poland buying from Hungary, with 1,830 reported awards — more than the Ireland–UK corridor (1,641) or the Germany–Austria axis (1,070).

For procurement professionals and policy watchers, these patterns matter. They reveal where the single market is functioning as intended, where geography and language still act as barriers, and which bilateral relationships dominate cross-border flows. The full corridor table and per-country breakdown follow for subscribers.