€115bn of defence kit, 38,238 new buses: how big Europe's other public supply markets are

EU Member States spent €115 billion on defence equipment in 2025, according to the European Defence Agency, one of the few official sizes for a public supply market in Europe. For buses, furniture, IT equipment and cleaning products, the best figures come from industry associations, production statistics and national accounts, each measuring something different. TED award notices add a third view: the contracts above the EU thresholds and who wins them.

Putting it simply: EDA counts €418 billion of defence spending in 2025, €115 billion of it on equipment. ACEA counts 38,238 new buses registered in the EU in 2025. Eurostat puts furniture manufacturers' turnover at about €120 billion (2024) and ICT equipment investment at €140.2 billion (2025). Detergents Europe values professional cleaning products at €10.66 billion (2025). Apart from defence, none of these is the public share. TED shows that share above the thresholds: in 2025, public buyers in 30 European countries made 15,036 awards for motor vehicles, 15,399 for computer equipment, 8,728 for furniture and 3,807 for cleaning products, and since November 2023 at least 98% of awards in each of these groups went to a company registered in the buyer's country.

The frame: all public purchasing, and the part on TED

Eurostat's government accounts put EU-27 public purchasing at €2.93 trillion in 2025, 15.5% of GDP (by country). The Commission's 2025 evaluation of the procurement directives says EU rules apply to as much as a quarter of public procurement spending, on average €616 billion a year of contracts in award notices published on TED in 2018–2023; by number, a 2023 Commission notice puts above-threshold procedures at about 20% of contracts.

Defence: €418 billion of spending, €115 billion on equipment

EDA's Defence Data 2025–2026 (published 16 July 2026, ministry data for all 27 Member States, constant 2025 prices) puts EU defence expenditure at €418 billion in 2025, 2.2% of GDP, with €454 billion projected for 2026. Equipment procurement reached €115 billion, up 26% in real terms, and defence R&D €17 billion, only 4.0% of spending. Only 24% of equipment procurement was collaborative (with EU partners and/or third countries); for European collaborative procurement, reported by 19 Member States, EDA gives 11%, which its text relates to investment and its chart to equipment procurement. EDA says collaborative procurement "remains below the desired target".

Eurostat's purchasing measure gives a much smaller number for the defence function (COFOG GF02): €132.8 billion for the EU-27 in 2024. Germany (€31.9 billion) and France (€29.5 billion) account for 46% of it, followed by Poland (€14.0 billion), Italy (€11.5 billion), the Netherlands (€6.9 billion) and Spain (€6.4 billion).

The two measure different things. EDA covers all defence expenditure reported by ministries, of which investment is 32%. The Eurostat measure counts only goods, services and investment bought from the market, so staff pay is outside it, and it is at current prices for 2024. Against EDA's previous edition for that year (€343 billion, 2024 prices), purchases come to about 39%: two sources, two definitions, an order of magnitude only.

On TED, the civil security groups are small and comparatively open. Emergency and security equipment (CPV 351) had 3,379 awards in 2025, with €1.27 billion among awards stating a value; 3.2% of awards since November 2023 went to foreign-registered companies. Police equipment (CPV 352) had 428 awards and €382 million, with a 7.2% foreign share. These groups are not the military equipment EDA measures; we make no TED claim about weapons.

Buses and vehicles: targets, registrations and awards

The Clean Vehicles Directive sets minimum shares of "clean" buses in each Member State's public procurement of buses (category M3, coaches excluded); at least half of each target must be zero-emission buses. It applies to procedures started after 2 August 2021.

A 65% target means at least 32.5% of buses procured must be zero-emission; for Poland, at least 23%.

ACEA counted 38,238 new buses in the EU in 2025 (up 7.5%), with electrically chargeable buses at 23.8% and diesel at 62.1%. From January to September 2026, registrations rose 15.2% to 32,695 and the electric share reached 26.4%. ACEA counts all new buses, coaches included, and "electrically chargeable" includes plug-in hybrids, so 23.8% says nothing about compliance with the directive. EU manufacturers sold 23,139 buses and coaches worth €6.25 billion in 2024 (Eurostat PRODCOM, manufacturer prices).

TED's motor vehicles group (CPV 341) covers all motor vehicles, not only buses. In 2025 it had 15,036 awards, with €13.5 billion among awards stating a value. Since November 2023, 7,023 companies have won at least once, 2.0% of awards went abroad, and Germany (9,785 awards), Poland (5,438) and France (3,886) lead. 40% of awards whose notice states the number of tenders received a single bid.

Furniture: industry turnover and €1.6 billion of awards

Eurostat estimates EU-27 furniture manufacturing turnover at about €120 billion in 2024 (NACE C31, all furniture including households, rounded estimate). Italy (€26.9 billion), Germany (€24.5 billion) and Poland (€15.7 billion) lead, and Poland employs the most people (188,551). Turnover includes exports and excludes imports. Office furniture is narrower: PRODCOM shows €1.91 billion of metal and €4.27 billion of wooden office furniture sold in 2024, about €6.2 billion together, office seating excluded. School furniture has no separate code, and we found no free primary figure from furniture industry associations.

On TED, furniture (CPV 391) had 8,728 awards in 2025 and €1.58 billion among awards stating a value. 6,445 companies have won since November 2023, the five most frequent winners hold only 3.2% of awards, and 2.0% went abroad. By awards since November 2023, France (3,562), Poland (3,335), Romania (2,736) and Germany (2,712) lead.

IT equipment: no official public figure

No official, comparable figure exists for what European governments spend on IT; the COFOG functions do not separate it. The closest official measure is investment in ICT equipment (hardware and telecoms) across the whole economy: €140.2 billion in 2025, up from €131.7 billion in 2024 (Eurostat national accounts), with the government share not separable. EU laptop production is small, about 758,000 units worth €411 million in 2024 (Eurostat estimate), which suggests most public hardware is made outside the EU.

TED's computer equipment group (CPV 302) had 15,399 awards in 2025 and €8.74 billion among awards stating a value. 6,953 companies have won since November 2023 and 1.0% of awards went abroad. By awards since November 2023, Poland (10,030), Czechia (6,074) and Romania (4,366) lead.

Cleaning products: read from charts

Detergents Europe (formerly A.I.S.E.) publishes its market figures on its facts page only as chart images; the numbers here are read from those charts. For 2025 (EU-27, UK, Switzerland and Norway) it shows a professional cleaning and hygiene market of €10.66 billion, much of which institutions buy, including kitchen and catering (€2.49 billion), healthcare (€2.47 billion) and building care (€1.33 billion). The household market is larger, €38.8 billion (Euromonitor data). Eurostat PRODCOM shows lower values because it measures manufacturer prices in the EU-27 only: about €7.6 billion of retail-packed washing and cleaning preparations and about €2.0 billion not packed for retail in 2024.

On TED, cleaning and polishing products (CPV 398) had 3,807 awards in 2025 and €197 million among awards stating a value. 1,599 companies have won since November 2023, and only 0.4% of awards went abroad. By awards since November 2023, Romania (5,729), France (1,498) and Poland (1,294) lead.

Laboratory and testing equipment, with caveats

No pan-European association publishes a laboratory market figure with a method. Eurostat's class for measuring, testing and navigation instruments had about €92 billion turnover in 2024, but it includes meters and radar. For Germany alone, SPECTARIS reports €11.22 billion of 2025 sales by about 330 makers of analytical, bio and laboratory technology, 54.2% of their sales abroad.

TED's checking and testing apparatus group (CPV 385) is also wider than laboratories, and some laboratory purchases may sit in other groups. With that caveat: 3,114 awards in 2025, €1.94 billion among awards stating a value, and the highest foreign share in this set, 12.5%. 52.7% of awards with a stated number of tenders had a single bid.

Food for public catering: a 2014 figure

The latest size from the Commission's Joint Research Centre is for 2014: a social food service market (schools, hospitals, care homes) of €82 billion in the EU-28, public and private spending combined, published in 2017. We found no more recent official EU figure. On TED, the three food groups had 17,985 awards in 2025 (miscellaneous food products, CPV 158, €1.54 billion), 8,261 (meat, CPV 151, €601 million) and 5,631 (fruit and vegetables, CPV 153, €484 million), each with a foreign share of 0.1%.

Summary across sectors

*Since November 2023. Figures in a row measure different things; do not read them as market shares. All groups: Europe by product category.

How we counted and what the sources measure

Cresques reads TED contract award notices for supplies from public buyers in 30 European countries (methodology): live notices published since 1 November 2023, computed on 9 November 2026, as on the category pages. An award is one winning company on one lot: it is not a tender and not an amount of money, and an award repeated by a later notice of the same procedure counts once. Values total only awarded amounts stated in notices, at ECB yearly average rates; framework ceilings are never totalled. A foreign award goes to a company registered in a country other than the buyer's. A foreign group's local subsidiary counts as local, and the Commission's 2025 evaluation estimates such indirect cross-border procurement at around 20% of the total.

Third-party figures keep their own definitions: EDA (ministry spending, constant prices), Eurostat government accounts (purchases, current prices), ACEA (all bus registrations), PRODCOM (EU production, manufacturer prices), business statistics (manufacturers' turnover, exports included), Detergents Europe (market value with the UK, Switzerland and Norway) and JRC (2014, EU-28). We never add them up.

What this means for a manufacturer

The official figures show whether a sector is large and growing: defence equipment up 26% in real terms, bus registrations up 15.2% in nine months of 2026, clean-bus targets rising from 2026. The TED counts add what they cannot show: across these groups, public buyers almost always award to companies registered in their own country, so the practical route in usually runs through a local distributor or partner already winning there.

Cresques shows, for each country and product category, which companies win those awards and from which buyers, with the notices behind them.