CPV code
also: CPV · Common Procurement Vocabulary
The CPV code (Common Procurement Vocabulary) is the EU-wide classification of the subject of a contract and must be stated in every contract notice above the thresholds. It consists of eight digits plus a check digit; the first two digits identify the division, and each further digit narrows the description through group, class and category. Because the code is language-independent, it is the only reliable way to find the same kind of work across all 24 official languages.
73,795 of our 93,519 open procedures carry a CPV code, spread across 45 divisions; the largest is division 45 with 16,625 open procedures. The remaining 19,724 have none, and every single one of them comes from a national portal — no TED notice lacks a CPV code.
What it means for a bidder
One rule follows for searching: keywords find your own country, CPV codes find Europe. Search for "lift maintenance" and you find English-language notices; search for class 50750000 and you find the same work in Portugal and Estonia as well. The price of that precision is maintenance: authorities sometimes pick a coarse code and sometimes the wrong one, and a filter set too narrowly cuts away real opportunities. Filtering at division or group level and refining with keywords works better.
Below the thresholds the CPV code is not consistently required, and many national portals do not supply it — precisely where searching is hardest anyway. Watch for supplementary codes as well: a supplementary code (a letter plus four digits) describes material or method and sometimes sits where you would expect the main subject of the contract.
Look it up in the corpus
Related terms
DEFINITION · a description of the law with a citation, not legal advice · FIGURE · from nightly-built aggregates of our own corpus · all terms: friedrich-clement.com/en/glossar