Public procurement is quietly becoming one of EU’s industrial policy tools of choice.
In a geopolitical environment that has turned harsher by the quarter, and with strategic autonomy now the organising ambition of European policy, the temptation is obvious: public purchasing represents roughly 14 percent of EU GDP, and conditioning access to contracts, and to the EU funding attached to them, on European origin, control or production looks like a lever Brussels actually holds.
Since 2022, the EU has pulled it again and again.
We are not the first to try this, and the evidence is sobering. The United States has run ‘Buy American rules’ for decades. The Peterson Institute puts the cost premium of local-content requirements at between 15 and 50 percent, with a central estimate of 20 to 30 percent.
US trains example
