European regulation on cross-border parcel delivery [1], which was adopted on 18 April 2018, is part of the European Commission’s Digital Single Market strategy. Its purpose is to make parcel deliveries across the European Union easier, to help foster the development of e-commerce. Its main objective is to provide users, both consumers and businesses alike, with greater transparency, and so enable them to better identify the operators that provide parcel delivery services, the products that are available to them and their prices.
Arcep’s new responsibilities: gather information on operators and their prices, assessment of the universal service tariffs
To this end, the European regulation confers a new set of competences on national regulatory authorities, which in France is Arcep. Namely:
- To gather information from parcel operators to be able to identify them, to obtain detailed information on their products and to monitor the market’s activity (Article 4 of the regulation);
- To obtain a public list of tariffs for the main products enabling the delivery of single-piece postal items, both nationally and cross-border (Article 5 of the regulation);
- To assess the reasonable nature of the price of cross-border parcel delivery services that are part of the universal service (Article 6 of the regulation).
The European Commission laid out the rules for implementing these provisions in an implementing regulation [2] and a set of guidelines.
Parcel operators are expected to provide this information starting this year
In accordance with Articles 4 and 5 of the regulation, parcel operators that are established in France and have an average staff of 50 or more, or established in several EU Member States, are required to provide Arcep with information on their identity and their products, [3] along with a public list of tariffs [4]. The deadline for providing this information is 31 January 2019.
To make the process easier for operators, Arcep has created a digital interface that allows them to complete their form directly online. It includes detailed instructions on how to supply their public list of tariffs.
Pursuant to the regulation, information on parcel operators’ public list of tariffs will be forwarded to the European Commission, which will then publish them on a dedicated website on 31 March 2019.
At the end of Q3 2019, operators will receive a request for information on their parcel delivery market activities. The deadline for sending this information to Arcep is 30 June 2019 [5].
Postal operators can address any questions they might have to: colis[a]arcep.fr.
[1] Regulation (EU) 2018/644 of the European parliament and of the council on cross-border parcel delivery services
[2] Implementing regulation No. 2018/1263.
[3] Article 4.1 of the regulation and Annex I of the implementing regulation.
[4] Article 5 of the regulation and its Annex.
[5] Article 4.3 of the regulation and Annex II of the implementing regulation.