Ecommerce Europe achieves major milestone in innovating cross-border parcel delivery services

After four months of discussions, country members of the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) have recently approved the Technical Specification (TS 17073) for Postal services - Interfaces for cross-border parcels. Ecommerce Europe is proud to have chaired the work within the CEN to harmonize postal and supply chain management standards to enable one item label for the delivery of merchandise to end customers.

 "This is a major step forward to really innovate cross-border parcel delivery services in Europe. One of the main causes of difficulties in parcel delivery was closed standards leading to proprietary networks, resulting in unfavorable market conditions for online merchants. The vote on the Technical Specification achieved an approval rate of 93,75% of all members in the CEN, representing 83,6% of Europe’s population. Ecommerce Europe is honored to have been in the driving seat to create solid open standards that will transform the old analog parcel into a digital and interconnected one”, declared Mr. Walter Trezek, Co-chair of the e-Logistics Working Group of Ecommerce Europe, who chaired the work on the standardized label in the past months.

By facilitating the work under a mandate of the European Commission, to specify harmonized Interfaces for cross-border parcels in Europe, Ecommerce Europe achieved a consensus involving all players in parcel delivery. It is the first time that closed networks and open specifications can be supported on one parcel label.

For Ecommerce Europe, the approval of CEN members of the Technical Specification is a clear statement that the strategy of the European e-commerce association to actively engage in shaping necessary market fundamentals through side regulation was right. Ecommerce Europe will engage itself in further activities to actively overcome hurdles linked to cross-border e-Logistics in the very near future.

 Ecommerce Europe is currently revising its Manifesto for a better parcel delivery market in Europe, published in September 2016, to take into account both the recent vote on the Standardized Label and the developments on the Proposal for a Regulation on cross-border parcel delivery services