Distance as an Entry Barrier, Not a Friction: Cross-Border Public Works Awards in the European Union, 2012–2023

European public procurement of construction works has been open to competition across Member States for three decades, yet cross-border award shares remain low. This paper separates two quantities the standard statistic confounds: whether a cross-border relationship exists, and how large it is once it does. The analysis matches 782,673 construction-works awards from 2012 to 2023 to a bilateral gravity data set, estimating a logit over country pairs, elasticities on trading pairs, and a staggered difference-in-differences on verified national transposition dates of Directive 2014/24/EU. Distance deters entry but does not govern volume. Over 2016 to 2020, the years bilateral data cover, 194 of 930 country pairs record any cross-border award: entry falls with distance and rises with a shared frontier, while the distance elasticity of cross-border value, measured on 410 pair-year cells, is indistinguishable from zero: +0.131 against −1.139 for merchandise trade. Transposition changed participation by nothing measurable, and the design is inconclusive. The remedies therefore point at the cost of first entry: the size gradient is consistent with lot aggregation under either a fixed cost of entry or selection into large lots, which are not separated, and mutual recognition of qualification and standard sureties address the same margin unmeasured.