Publications Office of the European Union (OP)

The Publications Office of the European Union, commonly called the OP, is the inter-institutional body responsible for publishing the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) and operating Tenders Electronic Daily (TED). For anyone involved in European public procurement, TED is the primary source of above-threshold contract opportunities across the 27 EU member states, plus EEA countries (Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein) and a number of other countries that participate in the Government Procurement Agreement. The UK's Find a Tender service performs a comparable function following Brexit.

What is the Publications Office?

The OP was established by an inter-institutional decision of the EU institutions and operates as a shared service for all the main EU bodies. Its core procurement-related functions are:

TED (Tenders Electronic Daily). TED is the supplement to the Official Journal dedicated to public procurement. All contract notices, prior information notices, contract award notices, and modification notices for contracts above the EU thresholds must be sent to TED for publication. The OP processes and publishes these notices, making them freely accessible to suppliers across Europe and beyond. In 2022 alone, TED published approximately 750,000 notices covering contracts worth trillions of euros.

eForms processing. From October 2023, new TED notices must use the eForms format defined by Implementing Regulation 2019/1780. The OP operates the eSenders system through which contracting authorities or their national procurement platforms submit notices for publication. The OP validates incoming notices against the eForms schema before publishing them.

EUR-Lex. EUR-Lex is the OP's database of EU law, including all procurement directives, regulations, and interpretive communications. It is the authoritative source for the legal texts that underpin European procurement rules.

Official Journal. Legislative acts, including threshold regulations, procurement directives, and Commission guidance, are published in the Official Journal. A directive only becomes binding once it has been published in the Official Journal.

Why it matters for bidders

TED is the single most important data source for European public procurement intelligence. Every contract above threshold that a public authority in an EU member state wishes to open to competition must be notified on TED before the tender period opens. This means that a systematic TED monitoring programme gives suppliers a comprehensive view of relevant opportunities across all EU markets.

The eForms transition also matters. eForms introduce structured, machine-readable data fields covering topics such as award criteria, selection criteria, contract duration, and estimated value. This structured data makes it easier to filter and compare opportunities at scale, which is exactly what procurement intelligence platforms use to surface relevant tenders.

Suppliers should also monitor TED for contract award notices, which reveal the names of winning suppliers, award values, and the number of tenders received. This information is valuable for benchmarking competitiveness and understanding market pricing.

Example

A Norwegian software consultancy wants to find all IT services contracts above EUR 140,000 being tendered by central government bodies in Germany and the Netherlands. By searching TED with the appropriate CPV codes and geographic filters, the consultancy can identify every relevant opportunity published in the last 30 days, complete with deadlines, award criteria, and links to the buyer's procurement portal for full documentation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is TED free to access?

Yes. TED is freely accessible at ted.europa.eu without registration. The full text of notices, including attachments where provided, is available at no charge. Third-party platforms aggregate and enrich TED data but the underlying source is free.

What is the difference between TED and the OJEU?

TED is the supplement to the Official Journal dedicated to procurement notices. The OJEU (Official Journal of the European Union) is the broader publication that includes legislative acts, court decisions, and institutional communications. When procurement professionals refer to "publishing in the OJEU," they mean publishing a notice on TED.

How quickly does TED publish notices after submission?

Under the eForms regime, notices submitted electronically are typically published within five days. For urgent accelerated procedures, publication can be achieved within two days of submission. Delays in submission can shorten the effective time available to bidders, so monitoring TED regularly is essential.