This time, it has gone through. After July’s failure, the European Parliament’s transport committee adopted its position on cross-border parcel deliveries on Thursday 12 October.
Negotiations with the Council are due to begin in a few weeks' time unless Parliament’s plenary session demands a revote on the text. This is, however, very unlikely and the compromises have been supported by a large majority at the different political groups.
This proposal for a regulation was presented in May 2016 as part of a raft of measures to tackle geo-blocking (unjustified geo-blocking, audiovisual, consumer protection, etc.). It aims to strengthen regulatory supervision and price transparency for cross-border parcel delivery services (see EUROPE 11558).
The Council reached a political agreement in principle at the beginning of June (see EUROPE 11803). The Parliamentary committee should have decided on its negotiating position on 11 July. The final report from Lucy Anderson (S&D, United Kingdom), however, was rejected by a very small majority (21 for, 21 against), despite the adoption of the majority of compromise amendments. This was due to differences regarding the evaluation of what are perceived as affordable prices (article 5).
The challenge: article 5 on affordability testing
In July, MEPs supported the European Commission approach, according to which the regulatory authorities in each country are obliged to carry out a detailed analysis of the prices applied by all operators on their respective territories (except the very small operators).
The adoption of this provision, however, was heavily criticised by the EPP group and more largely by the powerful postal operators, which led to the final report being rejected.
The new compromise amendment restricts the scope of this article: it demands that the regulatory authority carry out an evaluation when it deems them necessary. Similarly, it limits these controls to services carried out by public service operators, which falls under public service obligations (Annex 1 of the regulation). In this way, the European Parliament’s mandate is close to that of the Council, which also calls for optional controls for parcels that meet universal service obligations.
For the remainder, MEPs agreed on the definition of a parcel as a postal delivery that does not exceed 31.5 kg. They also call for the extension of price transparency obligations (Article 4) to all cross-border parcel delivery service providers, rather than just those providing universal service. They also scrap the provisions on transparent and non-discriminatory cross-border access (article 6), to the great disappointment of the ALDE group (the only group to support this article).
Finally, MEPs introduce a new article on information and quality standards that have to be communicated by a trader before they include a contract with the user (article 6a). They also strengthen the article on information that should be provided by an operator to the regulatory authority (article 3) by adding information on subcontractors to it.
At the end of the vote, the EPP group described the compromise as “solid and balanced”. The organisation representing public postal operators (PostEurope) was also satisfied. The president of the organisation, Jean-Paul Forceville stated, “Positive changes have been introduced, e.g. the TRAN committee has decided to delete the provision granting unconditional access to postal delivery networks for third party operators and leave it up to the market and commercial negotiations (Article 6: Ed). However, PostEurope urges consistency and proportionality with respect to affordability checks”. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)