International Public Procurement Instrument

Protectionism in public procurement is on the rise worldwide. During the last decade, studies have shown that the number of public procurement barriers has been multiplied by 5. These public procurement barriers can take many forms. They can be legal provisions restricting de jure the market access for foreign bidder or they can be practices de facto lowering the chances of success of foreign bidders in public procurement procedures.

Commonly observed restrictive schemes or measures adopted in third country include:

• Local content requirements
• Price preference schemes favouring domestic bidders in public procurement procedures
• Legal restriction/prohibition for foreign bidders to participate in public procurement procedures

For more information on public procurement barriers, the OECD has developed a taxonomy of public procurement measures restricting access to the EU procurement market.

You have encountered a barrier in a third country?

You can launch an International Public Procurement Instrument (IPI) complaint directly with the Single Entry Point through the IPI complaint form.

You are welcome to contact us directly on trade-eu-international-procurement-instrument@ec.europa.eu if you have any questions or need support when launching the complaint.

We will assess your IPI complaint together with our experts. Once completed, we will inform you of the outcome of the assessment.

You are interested party and want to submit information in the framework of an IPI investigation?

See guidance on submission of information by interested parties.

Declaration on copyright

When you submit information to the European Commission, you need to specify the declaration on copyright, please review the declaration on copyright guidelines.