Every working day the European Union publishes thousands of new public contract notices on TED— Tenders Electronic Daily, the online supplement to the Official Journal of the European Union, at ted.europa.eu. Whenever a public body anywhere in the EU wants to buy goods, services, or works above a set financial threshold, it is generally required to advertise the contract on TED. That makes it the single widest window into European public procurement — hundreds of billions of euros in contracts a year, open to bidders across the bloc and, in many cases, beyond it.

The most important thing to understand is that TED is a notice board, not a submission system. You find the opportunity on TED, but you almost never bid there. Each notice points you to the contracting authority’s own national or regional eProcurement (eSubmission) platform, and that is where you register, download the documents, and upload your tender. Get that model right and the rest is process.

What TED is (and who uses it)

TED carries notices from all 27 EU member states, plus the EEA countries (Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein) and a few others. The buyers are national ministries, regional and local governments, utilities, universities, hospitals, and other public bodies — all of which must follow the EU procurement directives when a contract is large enough to cross the thresholds. Below those thresholds, contracts are usually advertised only on the country’s own national portal rather than on TED.

A TED entry is a structured notice, not the tender itself. Notices come in types — a contract notice is a live opportunity, while a prior information notice signals something coming and a contract award notice records who won. Each notice is tagged with CPV codes (the Common Procurement Vocabulary that classifies what is being bought), the country and region, the procedure type, and the submission deadline.

Step 1 — Find the right notice

Search TED by keyword, CPV code, country, and publication date, and filter to contract notices so you see only live opportunities. TED lets you save searches and receive email alerts, which is the sane way to keep up rather than checking by hand. Note two dates on every notice you shortlist: when it was published and the exact submission deadline. Before you commit real effort, read the scope and award criteria the way you would any solicitation — our guide to how to read an RFP shows how to find the evaluation section fast and make an honest bid/no-bid call. You can also browse open bids in our directory and follow each listing back to its source.

Step 2 — Identify the buyer and their portal

Every notice names the contracting authority and gives web addresses for the procurement documents and for submitting a tender. Follow those links: they lead to the buyer’s national or regional eSubmission platform. There is no single pan-European submission site — France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, and the rest each run their own systems, and large buyers sometimes run their own on top of that. TED itself rarely hosts the actual tender pack; it hands you off to wherever the buyer works.

Step 3 — Register and download the documents

Create an account on the buyer’s eSubmission platform — registration is typically free — and download the full tender pack: the specification, contract terms, award criteria, and any response forms. Check the procedure type while you are there. Under an open procedure anyone may submit a complete tender straight away. Under a restrictedor competitive procedure you first submit a request to participate, the buyer shortlists candidates against published criteria, and only those invited then submit a full tender — which changes your timeline completely.

Step 4 — Complete the ESPD

Most EU tenders ask you to complete a European Single Procurement Document (ESPD)— a standardized self-declaration that you meet the eligibility and selection criteria. In it you confirm you are not subject to any exclusion grounds (unpaid taxes, serious misconduct, and so on) and that you meet the buyer’s requirements for financial standing and technical capacity. You usually fill it in electronically, either inside the portal or as an ESPD file the buyer provides. As a rule you do not attach the underlying certificates up front: only the bidder in line to win is later asked to produce the actual evidence. Because the ESPD is a formal declaration, answer it precisely — an overstatement that unravels at the evidence stage can cost you the award.

Step 5 — Submit before the deadline

Upload your tender through the buyer’s eSubmission portal, matching each requested document and form to its slot. Deadlines are strict and stated in the buyer’s local time; the platform closes at that moment and will not accept a late upload. Some systems require a qualified electronic signature (under the EU’s eIDAS rules) or specific file formats, so confirm those requirements early rather than discovering them at submission time. If anything in the documents is unclear, use the portal’s official clarification function before the questions deadline — answers are normally issued to all bidders so the process stays fair.

Language, eligibility, and costs

Languageis the detail newcomers underestimate. TED metadata is available in every official EU language and often carries an English summary, but the binding tender documents are usually in the buyer’s national language, and you must respond in the language the notice specifies. Budget for professional translation where English is not accepted.

On eligibility, suppliers established in the EU and EEA have full access. Firms from outside the EU can often bid too, subject to the procedure’s rules and the EU’s international commitments — the WTO Government Procurement Agreement and bilateral trade deals — with some reciprocity limits under the EU’s more recent trade instruments. Read each notice for any restriction on non-EU participation. As for cost, using TED and most national portals is free; your main outlays are translation, any required e-signature certificate, and occasionally a document fee on a specific system.

Tips and common mistakes

  • Never try to bid on TED.It is the advertisement; go to the buyer’s named portal to register and submit.
  • Register early. Some national platforms verify your identity or require an e-signature that can take days to set up.
  • Answer every ESPD criterion honestly. Blanks and overstatements are the fastest routes to elimination.
  • Check the procedure type. A restricted procedure means a request-to-participate step comes before any tender.

The bottom line

TED is where you findEuropean public contracts; the buyer’s national eSubmission portal is where you win them. Search TED, follow the notice to the right platform, register, complete the ESPD, and submit in the correct language before the clock runs out. The pattern of advertise-then-submit-elsewhere is the same one behind the UK’s tender sites and the wider world of international open-contracting portals. For the universal mechanics behind any of them, see how to bid on a government procurement portal — then set up alerts so the right notices come to you.