The European Commission will ask companies for “solutions” to cross-border delivery problems inEurope but has no plans to follow up its current Green Paper with a formal directive to legislate
on the EU parcel delivery market, according to a top official.The Green Paper on “an integrated parcel delivery market for the growth of e-commerce in the EU”, which was published last autumn, had “successfully triggered off a debate”, Werner Stengg, head ofthe Online and Postal Services Unit in the Commission’s Internal Market directorate-general, toldlast week’s European Postal Services conference in Madrid.
The quality of deliveries, especially cross-border, had been identified by e-retailers andconsumers as a problem hindering e-commerce growth in Europe, he explained. Cross-border e-commerceremained relatively low and its high potential was not being achieved, partly due to the deliveryconcerns of online shoppers, he added.
The objectives of the Green Paper had been “to encourage the development of seamless deliverysystems” to boost European e-commerce, to ensure sustainable growth, create new jobs and promoteinnovation and new services as well as to ensure e-commerce benefits are available throughout theEU, Stengg said.
However, there are diverse expectations and challenges impacting on the sector, he pointed out.Consumers wanted fast, flexible and affordable delivery (or even ‘free shipping’), e-retailersfaced pricing and competitive challenges while delivery operators were under pressure to operate atlow costs and had low profit margins, Stengg explained.
Outlining the next steps, the Austrian-born EU official explained that industry consultation onthe Green Paper closed in February and the wide range of comments received from companies andindustry associations is now being reviewed. The Commission would await the position of theEuropean Parliament on delivery, which is expected in the spring, and would then issue itsconclusions from the Green Paper consultation “by September”.
But Stengg told the audience of senior postal executives and managers that Brussels “is likelyto be asking markets to provide solutions. You do not have to expect a draft directive on seamlessdelivery. I can take away the fear of draft legislation”.
Areas for possible “follow-ups” to the Green Paper included technical issues such as betterinformation exchange and tracking & tracing within the parcel delivery system, the potentialfor cooperation or consolidation between operators and better transparency about service qualityand performance standards, Stengg commented.
However, cooperation was a complex issue, he admitted, since consolidation of volumes such asfor final-mile delivery offered the opportunity to reduce operating costs but could also “takecompetition out of the system” and reduce differentiation between the different delivery firms.
He noted that in their Green Paper comments e-retailers had tended to agree about deliveryproblems but had displayed “little consensus on possible solutions”.
In a panel discussion following his presentation, PostEurop representative Denis Joram, a chiefeconomist with France’s La Poste, stressed: “There is a lot of competition in the parcels marketand the EC should not legislate. Posts are cooperating as much as we can but we are alsocompetitors.” Joram also highlighted the difference between the delivery rates charged by posts toe-retailers and the delivery charges applied by e-retailers for consumers. “Postal operators do notfix the delivery costs of e-retailers for recipients. We are not responsible for their pricingstrategy.”
In response, Stengg said Brussels did not want to force operators to reduce the prices theycharged to e-retailers but wanted to see how costs could be reduced “in the delivery system”.
UPS’ EU public affairs director Mark van der Horst noted that UPS had seen a “significant shift”from B2B to B2C deliveries in recent years and called on the European Commission to look at how tomake SMEs in Europe more interested in selling in other countries.
