Fortunately, two recent complementary sets of world input and output data (WIOD, Timmer et al, 2015; OECD, ICIO, 2015) allow us to have a much more accurate and robust information on actual openness of public procurement markets, and these real-life data shows a strikingly different picture: The openness of the EU and the U.S. towards third countries (non-EU and non-US) in public procurement is around both 4-5%, depending on the set of data. In fact, EU was less open than the U.S. until the late 2000s, and did not catch up with the U.S. until the 2008 financial crisis.
Source: ECIPE
Procurement Passion 