EU Braces for Fight Over Shielding €2.5 Trillion of Public Deals

European Union countries will begin debating next week how much preferential treatment to give domestic firms bidding for public contracts worth about €2.5 trillion ($2.9 trillion) a year.

France is leading the drive to give preference to European companies in procurement contracts, a market equivalent to about 15% of the bloc’s GDP, as a way to boost domestic firms and counterbalance protectionist US trade policies as well as China’s weaponization of critical dependencies, according to people familiar with the matter.