Where US manufacturers already win EU public contracts: what 760 awards show

Do European public buyers ever buy from American companies directly? The public record gives a precise answer. We counted every contract award for supplies on TED, the EU's public procurement journal, from November 2023 to October 2026, and looked at the winners registered in the United States.

The answer is yes, in a narrow set of categories and in small numbers. The small numbers say more about how US products reach European buyers than about whether they do.

Putting it simply: 548 US-registered companies won 760 public supply awards in the EU and EEA in three years. Most of them sell scientific instruments, genomics systems, software and defense equipment, and about 40% of the awards come from education and research buyers. Germany is the largest single destination. Ordinary industrial products from the US are bought too, but almost always from a European company: a distributor or a European subsidiary. For most US manufacturers, that is the route that matters.

How we counted

Cresques reads TED contract award notices for supplies from the daily and monthly notice packages (see our methodology). An award is one winner on one lot; one notice can carry several. For this post, a "US-registered" winner is a company whose registered country in the notice is the United States. The figures were computed from the Cresques database on November 3, 2026.

The main caveat comes first. A US company that wins through its European subsidiary is not in these counts. If a US group's German GmbH or French SAS wins a contract, the notice shows a German or French company, and that is how we count it. So these figures measure direct wins by US-registered entities, not the reach of American groups in Europe, which is larger by an amount the notices cannot show.

The scale: 548 companies, 760 awards

For context, the database holds 103,707 winning companies and 4.87 million award lines. Against that, 548 US-registered companies and 760 awards are a small slice: roughly half a percent of the winning companies, and about one award line in 6,400.

Outside Europe, the US is the largest source of direct winners, by a wide margin:

Two European countries outside the EU and EEA are ahead of it: companies registered in the United Kingdom (931 profiles, 1,606 awards) and Switzerland (443 profiles, 1,179 awards) win more often than US-registered ones.

Two readings are possible, and both are true. American companies win more directly than companies from any other non-European country. And direct wins from outside Europe are rare for everyone, because European public buyers mostly buy from companies established near them. In an earlier one-year sample described on our methodology page (which left out medical division 33), about 96% of public supply winners were registered in the buyer's own country.

What US-registered winners sell

By the main CPV code of each notice, the awards cluster heavily:

Laboratory and precision instruments alone account for 237 of the 760 awards, almost a third. Add medical equipment, software and defense equipment, and four divisions cover 535 awards, about 70%.

The names of the most frequent winners point the same way. By award lines, the notices show KLA Corporation (17, plus 8 under a second profile named "KLA"), Bionano Genomics (16), 10x Genomics (16, plus 7 under a second profile), ProQuest (10), Twist Bioscience (9), Pacific Biosciences (9), Westinghouse Electric (6) and Union Biometrica (5). These are winners of public supply contracts as published in the award notices; the notices say nothing about these companies' strategies, and neither do we. We leave contract values out: many of these awards are framework agreements, where the value is a ceiling, not a price (see framework values).

The same company sometimes appears in notices under two names or numbers, and we keep the profiles apart until the evidence shows they are one entity. So "548 companies" is a count of profiles, and a few firms are counted twice.

The buyers fit the same pattern. By the buyer's main activity given in the notice, the 760 awards split like this: education 300, general public services 130, health 113, defense 105, electricity 36, economic affairs 29, public order and safety 22, environment 12. Education and research bodies take about 40% of the awards, health about 15% and defense about 14%. The US companies that win directly sell specialized equipment to buyers used to dealing with a manufacturer. A municipality buying pumps, lighting or cleaning machines usually buys from a local supplier.

Where they win: Germany first

By the country of the buyer, the awards to US-registered winners spread like this:

Germany takes 153 awards, about one in five, and twice as many as France in second place. Finland, Estonia and Slovenia rank higher than their size suggests; with counts this small, a few research buyers can move a country's total.

Our comparison of Germany, the Netherlands, France and Poland covers the trade-offs beyond procurement.

Why the counts are small, and what that means for everyday products

Most US manufacturers do not make sequencers or semiconductor inspection systems. They make valves, fixtures, lab consumables, safety equipment, furniture parts. Those products are bought by European public buyers in large volumes, but the award notices name European companies as winners. The buyer wants a supplier who bids in the local language, holds stock nearby and services on site. A distributor does that; a factory in Ohio usually cannot.

So the low number of direct US wins shows how European buyers buy, not that they avoid American products. For an everyday industrial product, the practical question is which European distributors already win contracts in your category, country by country. Our US playbook for entering the EU through distributors and the comparison of distributor, subsidiary and direct online routes go through the choice in detail.

Two external facts sharpen the picture. First, since July 1, 2026, Regulation (EU) 2026/1455 sets the EU customs duty at 0% for US-origin goods listed in its Annex I, which includes whole chapters such as 84 (machinery), 85 (electrical equipment) and 90 (optical, measuring, medical and precision instruments). The regulation applies until December 31, 2029, unless the EU suspends it. That lowers your distributor's landed cost; it does not change who the buyer buys from. Our post on the zero tariff covers origin proof and what still applies. Check the code for your product with your customs broker.

Second, the EU rules that put a contract on TED apply above thresholds that are revised every two years. For most public buyers, under Directive 2014/24/EU, Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/2152 set them, from January 1, 2026, at €140,000 for supply contracts of central government authorities and €216,000 for other contracting authorities, down from €143,000 and €221,000. Utilities (Directive 2014/25/EU) and defense contracts (Directive 2009/81/EC) have higher thresholds. Below those amounts, contracts are governed by national rules and published on national portals, so they are mostly outside this count.

What the data cannot show

• Subsidiaries. Wins by European subsidiaries of US groups are counted under the European country. This is the largest gap.
• Below-threshold contracts. Smaller contracts published only on national portals are not in TED.
• Services and works. This analysis covers supply contracts only.
• Private buyers. Award notices cover public buyers. A distributor that sells only to private customers never appears.
• Products, not just winners. A European distributor that wins a contract may be supplying an American product. The notice names the winner, not the manufacturer of the goods.

What this means for a US manufacturer

If you make specialized instruments, genomics or lab systems, software or defense equipment, direct wins are on record, mostly with education, research and health buyers, and Germany, France and the Netherlands are where most of them happen. For almost everything else, European public buyers reach US products through European companies. Your first task is to find the distributors that already win in your category in your first country, and check which of them are independent and which are a competitor's subsidiary.

That is what Cresques does on the TED data: you create a market from a country and up to five CPV categories and see the companies that won public supply contracts in them, each tied to the notices behind it. A full company profile (4 credits) shows each award with its buyer and date and researches what kind of company it is, with quotes checked on its own pages. New accounts get 10 credits once, enough for one market map, and the Free plan shows the first five companies of each market; see pricing and Cresques for US manufacturers.