EU's newly-opened procurement market should increase business opportunities for U.S. exporters

Business America, June, 1995 by Bob Straetz

Sources of Information

Quick and effective access to proposed contracts will be essential for U.S. and EU companies to take advantage of these open market procurement agreements. U.S. firms can do several things to obtain information on procurement contracts in the EU. First, they can subscribe to the Official Journal S Series, which is available from Unipub in Lanham, Md., tel. (1-800) 274-4888. The EU puts all information carried in the Official Journal S Series on-line in the Tender Electronic Daily (TED). To subscribe to TED in the United States, call Trade Fair International in Washington, D.C., at (202) 785-2209 or Lexis-Nexis in Dayton, Ohio at (513) 865-7325. Companies can access contracts for a specific product on TED and avoid having to go through the entire list of procurement projects. TED is located in Luxembourg and can be reached at 011-352-3498-1204.

European Union firms wanting to tap in to opportunities in the U.S. procurement market should subscribe to the Commerce Business Daily published by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Interested parties should call (202) 482-0632. Twelve companies around the U.S. carry the CBD on line. The CBD staff will provide a list of these firms. Companies using this publication can focus quickly on bids in their field of interest by using an index system.

Title VII Report

Title VII of the 1988 Trade Act requires that the President submit to Congress a report by April 30 of each year (until 1996), identifying countries that discriminate in their government procurement against U.S. firms. The United States Trade Representative (USTR) is to name, first, countries that are signatories to the GATT Government Procurement Code and are not in compliance with the Code. Second, USTR is to name countries that are signatories to the Code and are in compliance with the Code, but which maintain a significant and persistent pattern of discrimination against U.S. products and services in procurements not covered by the Code, causing identifiable harm to U.S. business interests. And, third, USTR is to name countries not signatories to the Code which consistently practice discrimination against U.S. firms in procurements of products and services, causing identifiable harm to U.S. business. The countries cited under the above categories must sell large amounts of government procurement to the U.S. Two new categories for identification were included after the Uruguay Round in 1994: lack of anti-corruption laws and lack of transparent procurement procedures.

The 1995 Title VII report, issued April 30, identified the EU for discrimination in telecommunications procurement which harm U.S. exporters of telecom equipment. The EU was named because the U.S. and EU failed to reach an agreement ending the discriminatory provisions in the EU Utilities Directive applying to telecom equipment procurement. The United States applied sanctions on U.S. procurement opportunities to EU firms worth about $20-25 billion. These sanctions have also been extended to cover new EU member states Austria, Finland, and Sweden.