Primer 2026-08-25 7 min read

TED explained for smaller suppliers, and why you miss contracts you would win

Most suppliers who lose EU public contracts never got scored. Here is where the exclusions happen, and which rules are on your side.

Updated 25 August 2026

TED (Tenders Electronic Daily) is the online version of the 'Supplement to the Official Journal' of the EU, dedicated to European public procurement.

Roughly 1,500 notices open to bidders appear on TED every working day, from every member state and several countries beyond.

TED is Tenders Electronic Daily, the EU's publication service for public contracts above certain thresholds. Roughly 1,500 notices open to bidders appear on it every working day, from every member state and several countries beyond.

It is genuinely open data. Anyone can read it and nobody needs permission. Which raises the obvious question: if it is free and public, why do smaller suppliers keep missing contracts they could have won?

The three ways a good supplier loses without being judged

Most SMEs do not lose because a rival wrote a better bid. They lose earlier.

They never see the notice. With 1,500 a day across 24 languages, discovery is a real problem. Keyword alerts in English cover about 5% of what gets published.

They are excluded on eligibility. Public procurement assesses whether you are allowed to bid separately from, and before, how good your offer is. A supplier who would have scored highest can be removed for a missing certificate, an insufficient turnover figure, or a reference contract that does not match. Nobody reads their answers.

They run out of time. Bidding lands on the owner or a manager who already has a job. A tender that needs 30 hours across three weeks competes with actual delivery, and delivery wins.

Only the third is about capacity. The first two are about information, which is a solvable problem.

What a contract notice actually contains

Once you know the anatomy, they read quickly:

• The buyer. Who they are and where. Buyers have habits worth learning.
• The subject and its CPV codes. CPV is the EU's classification vocabulary; the

first two digits are the category. 45 is construction, 72 is IT services, 33 is medical. Learning your own two-digit codes is the single most useful hour you can spend.

• Estimated value. Present only about 45% of the time, and for frameworks it is a

ceiling across years and suppliers, not a contract.

• Procedure type. Open means anyone may bid. Restricted means you apply first and

are shortlisted. Frameworks and dynamic purchasing systems are permission to compete later rather than work now.

• Selection criteria. What you must be: turnover, insurance, certifications,

reference contracts.

• Award criteria and their weightings. How the offer is scored. These must be

published. If quality is 60% and price 40%, the cheapest bid does not win, and that should change how you write.

• Two deadlines. The submission deadline, and the earlier one for clarification

questions. The second is the one people miss.

• Lots. Whether the contract is split, and whether you may bid for one.

Four rules that exist to help smaller suppliers

Most SMEs do not know these, and they are the difference between an impossible tender and a winnable one.

Turnover requirements are capped. The required annual turnover generally may not exceed twice the contract value, and a buyer who demands more has to justify it in the documents. If you meet a turnover bar that looks disproportionate, that is worth questioning rather than accepting.

You do not need every certificate up front. The European Single Procurement Document is a self-declaration: you confirm you meet the criteria, and only the likely winner produces the paperwork. Suppliers routinely self-exclude from tenders they could have entered because they assume they need a folder of certificates on day one.

Lots exist for you. Contracts get divided into lots substantially so smaller suppliers can bid for a piece. Check whether you may bid for one lot rather than walking away from the whole contract.

You may borrow capacity. If you cannot meet a capacity requirement alone, you can bid jointly, subcontract, or formally rely on another entity's standing. There is paperwork and the partner may need to pass checks too, but "we are too small" is frequently a structure problem rather than a size problem.

Clarification questions are free and almost nobody asks them

If something in the documents is contradictory, undefined, or looks impossible, you can ask the buyer before the deadline. Answers usually go to every bidder.

Suppliers avoid this because they think it signals weakness. It signals that you read the documents. And occasionally a question changes a requirement for everyone, which is worth more than any sentence you will write in the bid itself.

Ask about contradictions between documents, undefined terms that carry marks, and requirements you suspect are disproportionate. Do not ask anything answered in the documents, and do not ask anything that reveals your approach, because the answer goes to your competitors too.

Where to actually start

If you have never bid before, do this in order:

1. Find your CPV divisions. Two digits. Usually one or two of them.
2. Read ten recent notices in those divisions. Not to bid, to learn the vocabulary

and see what the requirements look like in practice.

1. Write down what you already have. Reference contracts with buyer, value and

date. Certifications with expiry dates. Turnover. Insurance levels. This document is 80% of every selection questionnaire you will ever complete, and assembling it once is the highest-value hour in the whole process.

1. Pick one tender you can genuinely win and go through it properly, even if you

lose. The second bid costs a fraction of the first.

1. Ask for the debrief when you lose. In most member states you are entitled to

the reasons and to the winning tender's relative advantages. That is free market research and hardly anyone collects it.

None of this requires a bid team. It requires seeing the right notices and knowing which requirements are real. The first is a data problem and the second is a reading problem, and both are the kind of thing an AI with the right tools handles well.