Background
In its communication dated 11 January 2012, the European Commission highlighted parcel delivery deficiencies as a significant barrier to the growth of cross-border e-commerce. To address these concerns, a Green Paper and public consultation were launched on 29 November 2012, identifying key challenges and exploring potential solutions, including regulatory measures.
To proactively address these issues and avoid regulatory intervention, European national postal operators set up an Industry Initiative. This initiative introduced concrete commitments aimed at enhancing cross-border delivery services, directly responding to the concerns raised in the Green Paper.
In May 2015, the Commission unveiled its Digital Market Strategy, acknowledging the significant strides made by the industry in enhancing convenience and service quality. However, to further strengthen cross-border parcel delivery, the Commission proposed additional measures focused on increasing price transparency and improving regulatory oversight.
A year later, the Commission submitted to the Council and the European Parliament a proposal for a Regulation on cross-border parcel delivery.
The Campaign
During this time, PostEurop and its members launched the Deliver4Europe campaign with the following objectives:
Deliverables included a campaign website, social media campaign, targeted events, media outreach, videos, testimonials, facts and figures and mailings.
Outcome
The Regulation finally adopted in 2018 requires parcel delivery service providers to provide their public list prices for a certain set of products to the relevant National Regulatory Authority. The European Commission publishes these prices on a dedicated website in order to improve transparency of tariffs and to enable consumers and businesses to compare domestic and cross border tariffs between member states and between providers.
The Regulation also empowers National Regulatory Authorities to assess tariffs for cross-border parcel delivery services which are subject to universal service obligation and that they consider unreasonably high.
The E-Commerce working group closely monitors the political process in a constructive way.
