Public Procurement: How open is the European Unionto US firms and beyond? CEPS Policy Insights No 2020-04 / March 2020

A recent report on public procurement published by the United States Government Accounting Office (GAO) attempted to provide a range of estimates for the EU and the US, among others, and argued that the EU awarded a low share of public procurement contracts to US firms ($300 million) compared to a much higher value of US public procurement ($3 billion) awarded to EU firms (GAO 2019). However, the methodological approach used by GAO was partial and misrepresented the level of EU openness, as it only looked only at the ‘tip of the procurement iceberg’ and missed out other main avenues for international government procurement. Once these other two main procurement modes are taken into account, EU openness in procurement is much higher, vis-a-vis both for US and third countries. Overall, the EU has awarded over €50 billion worth of public contracts to foreign firms, out of which €11 billion to US firms. Comparable data across all modalities do not yet exist for the US, but we do have clear evidence that, since 2009, the US has introduced the largest number of protectionist procurement measures severely affecting international procurement.