Following two rounds of trilogue negotiations, the co-legislators reached a provisional agreement in December 2017. On 13 March 2018, the European Parliament at its plenary session, adopted the Commission proposal to make prices for cross-border parcel delivery services more transparent and affordable, and to increase regulatory oversight of the EU parcel market.
The regulation now must be adopted by the Council. It will then enter into force 20 days after its publication in the Official Journal of the EU, probably in May 2018. The European Commission needs to also adopt an implementing act to create a form for gathering the information required to be reported under the Regulation and publish guidance for tariffs assessment by the national Regulators.
Through this regulation, the co-legislators ensured greater transparency on workers’ terms and conditions in the parcels sector and introduced provisions to tackle obstacles to e-commerce between EU member states. The regulation also strengthened consumers rights with added information provision requirements about delivery options like pricing, choice and complaints procedures.
UNI Europa Post & Logistics supported the European Parliament negotiator, S&D MEP Lucy Anderson and advocated strongly throughout the legislative process. The agreement enables to shine a light on unfair or illegal terms and conditions for workers in the delivery industry. Parcel delivery companies with 50 or more employees must report yearly to regulators on their employment practices as well as the use of sub-contractors. National regulators can also ask of smaller companies of over 25 employees similar reporting obligations. Parcel delivery providers, and their subsidiaries must provide their national authorities with information on turnover, number of employees (part-time, full-time, temporary workers and self-employed), number of parcels handled, names of their subcontractors and any publicly accessible price list for parcel delivery services.
Dimitris Theodorakis, UNI Europa Post & Logistics Director said :
“This report is welcome as it supports e-Commerce growth on one hand and introduces reporting obligations for parcel delivery service providers on the other. The Commission’s Digital Single Market strategy is in this case accompanied by social and employment measures. The adopted new rules will bring forward more transparency in terms of prices for consumers and SMEs. More importantly for trade unions in the Logistics sector, the regulation will enable us to shed some light on the sector’s working conditions and employment terms. E-Commerce promotion must not come at the expense of decent quality jobs. It will assist in exposing some of the precarious and insecure terms and conditions that are prevalent in the sector notably in the last-mile delivery. It’s time to act to limit over-recourse to flexible and precarious conditions such as self-employment or zero-hour working contracts that fail to give workers decent terms and conditions. The co-legislators acted in favour of consumers, SMEs and workers by significantly ameliorating the regulatory oversight of a sector that has a complex supply chain and which often relies precarious employment models.”
The adopted Regulation text can be found here.
