Abstract

For  more  than  20  years,  the  United  States  and  the  European  Union  have  engaged  in  often-contentious negotiations over access to government procurement. The EU is dissatisfied with the level of procurement that the US has opened under the WTO Government Procurement Agreement and, as a consequence, it does not give the US its most comprehensive coverage. The US has been constrained in responding to the EU’s requests for greater access, especially to state procurement, by  both  its  federal  structure  of  government  and  by  domestic  purchasing  requirements.  At  the current time, neither party has proposed a way to break the impasse.  
This  paper  reviews  the  current  state  of  affairs  between  the  US  and  the  EU  on  government procurement, examining the procurement that they open to one another and the procurement that they withhold. It then proposes a strategy for the two sides to use the TTIP negotiations to move forward.  This  strategy  includes  both  steps  to  expand  their  current  commitments  in  the  TTIP,  as well as to develop a longer-term approach by making the TTIP a ‘living agreement’. This strategy suggests  that  the  EU  and  the  US  could  find  a  way  to  expand  their  access  to  government procurement contracts and at least partially defuse the issue.