If Europe wants to buy European, it needs to see through shell companies

The phrase “Buy European” is top of the news agenda across Europe today.

In European capitals, public procurement is increasingly framed as a strategic lever: to rebuild industrial capacity, de-risk supply chains, support decarbonisation, and respond to geopolitical pressure.

The argument is (deceptively) simple: if public money is shaping markets, then public buyers should be able to show preference to European industry in certain strategic sectors. But the policy debate is also highly charged, because it sits on a fine line between resilience and protectionism.

But I want to argue that Europe can’t operationalise “Buy European” (or any serious procurement de-risking agenda) without better beneficial ownership data.

“Buy European” is a data problem

Public procurement in the EU is enormous — often cited at around €2.3 trillion annually — and policymakers already describe it as a strategic instrument, including the potential introduction of an EU preference clause.

If a contracting authority wants to apply a preference policy, it needs to answer basic questions reliably:

• Who ultimately owns and controls this supplier?
• Is the bidder genuinely “European”, or a European-incorporated vehicle controlled from elsewhere?
• Is the supplier part of a wider group with links to sanctioned individuals, debarred firms, or high-risk jurisdictions?
• Are two “competing” bidders actually related through the same beneficial owner?

Without robust beneficial ownership information, any “Buy European” approach falls down.

Cross-border ownership networks are the point, not an edge case

In 2026, ownership and control is routinely international. It’s normal for a supplier to bid through a local subsidiary, owned by a holding company, owned by a private vehicle, owned by a trust-like arrangement, with key decision-makers and economic benefit sitting in yet another country.

That’s not inherently bad. But it means procurement risk management can’t stop at the first corporate registration document. If you only see the first layer, you don’t see the risk.

And this matters even more as procurement becomes a geopolitical tool. The EU’s use of the International Procurement Instrument — including restrictions targeting Chinese medical device suppliers — shows that market access and strategic procurement are no longer theoretical debates; they’re being implemented.

When rules tighten, incentives to route ownership through intermediaries increase. So the integrity of “Buy European” depends on whether buyers can follow ownership networks across borders.

Beneficial ownership transparency is moving — but unevenly

The direction of travel globally is toward stronger beneficial ownership transparency requirements and more verification of information — driven by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and OECD.

In the EU, countries are continuing work to update their beneficial ownership regimes to align with the 2024 AML package.

But — crucially for procurement — access and usability of data remain inconsistent, especially after the shift toward “legitimate interest” access models in many jurisdictions.

If procurement teams can’t reliably access and reuse ownership data, then policy ambition won’t translate into operational reality.

What good looks like: beneficial ownership data that procurement can actually use

Procurement doesn’t just need more data. It needs data that is:

• Structured (not PDFs and free text)
• Machine-readable (so it can be checked at scale)
• Verifiable and updated (because ownership changes)
• Linkable across datasets (company registers, sanctions lists, debarment registers, contract awards)
• Comparable across borders (because supply chains and corporate groups are cross-border)

That’s exactly where the Beneficial Ownership Data Standard (BODS) comes in:

Data standard | Understand beneficial ownership

BODS, developed by Open Ownership and Open Data Services, provides a structured data format for representing beneficial ownership information — people, entities, and the relationships between them — in a way that can be published, reused and linked.

And importantly BODS is designed to interoperate with public procurement data. The Open Contracting Data Standard guidance explicitly maps how beneficial ownership information can be published and used alongside contracting data, including why it’s often better to maintain a separate beneficial ownership register and link procurement records to it:

Beneficial ownership information - Open Contracting Data Standard 1.1.5 documentation

Why this matters for the Brussels debate on protectionism

One reason “Buy European” triggers such political heat is the fear it becomes blunt protectionism — more friction, higher prices, retaliatory measures, and less competition.

High-quality beneficial ownership data is part of the antidote.

If policymakers want a targeted, defensible approach — focused on strategic risk rather than blanket discrimination — then decisions must be evidence-based. Beneficial ownership data helps you do that: it lets authorities focus on control, influence, conflicts of interest and collusion, rather than crude proxy measures.

Improving beneficial ownership transparency can make strategic procurement more precise — and less protectionist.

A call to action

If governments want procurement to support “Buy European” objectives and withstand scrutiny, they should invest in:

1. Collecting beneficial ownership data in line with a common standard
2. Focus on verification and capturing timely updates because supplier ownership changes mid-contract
3. Publish and share it using BODS, so it can be more easily linked, compared, and analysed
4. Link procurement data (OCDS) to ownership data (BODS) using stable identifiers, so buyers and watchdogs can follow the money and control
5. Design access rules that enable legitimate procurement risk checks, across international borders, not just domestic lookups

“Buy European” is a test of whether Europe can turn political slogans into implementable policy. The fastest way to fail that test is to ignore beneficial ownership.

If you can’t see who owns a supplier, you can’t credibly preference, de-risk, or defend procurement decisions. But if you can — using modern, interoperable data standards — then procurement becomes what policymakers keep saying it should be: a strategic tool, grounded in evidence, not guesswork.

For four years, I was the product owner of the Beneficial Ownership Data Standard, the world’s leading open standard for beneficial ownership information and continue to advocate to improve beneficial ownership data quality and standardisation. To learn more or if you need technical guidance or consultancy support, contact me via beneficialownership.co.uk.