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CEF eDelivery: Continued uptake of AS4 message exchange protocol

European Commission 2018


The European Commission very much welcomes the continued uptake of the AS4 message exchange protocol, underpinning a Digital Single Market in Europe.

The secure transfer of data is a fundamental aspect of the digital economy. Any EU policy domain (justice, procurement, consumer protection, etc.) requires secure, reliable, cross-border and cross-sector exchange of documents and data (weather structured, non-structured and/or binary).

Currently, day-to-day e-mail is unlikely to be secure enough to deliver sensitive information and official documents. This happens because encryption of email exchange is not widely practised in daily life. Even by accepting the security limitations of common email for our 'routine' exchanges, the exchange of official documents and sensitive information must be handled according to different requirements.

eDelivery is one of the building blocks of the European Commission's Connecting Europe Facility (CEF). CEF eDelivery is a network of nodes for digital communications. It is based on a distributed model where every participant becomes a node using standard transport protocols and security policies. The CEF eDelivery building block is based on the AS4 messaging protocol, open and free for all, developed by the OASIS standards development organisation. To ease its adoption in Europe, eDelivery uses the AS4 implementation guidelines defined by the Member States in the e-SENS Large Scale Pilot.

The continued adoption of CEF eDelivery and the AS4 message exchange protocol is a major step in creating a connected Digital Single Market in Europe and reducing costs for citizens, businesses and public administrations.

The European Commission therefore welcomes news that e-Boks, the leading national solution for secure digital mail in Denmark, Norway and Sweden is adopting CEF eDelivery. The impending adoption of CEF eDelivery would see AS4 implemented for public authorities, businesses and citizens - in total 15 million users with over 400 million transactions per annum - in Denmark, Sweden, Norway mainly but also in Finland, the United Kingdom, Luxembourg and Ireland. The adoption of a common standards for data exchange would therefore lead to a significant reduction in costs, benefiting users, businesses and the Digital Single Market throughout Europe.

This adoption of CEF eDelivery is one of the largest examples of a service provider connecting so many users at once. It underscores the value and importance of having industry driving the adoption of common standards in Europe.

e-Boks’ far-reaching adoption of CEF eDelivery also comes as it signs a Letter of Understanding with the Norwegian Agency for Public Management and eGovernment (Difi) promoting usage of AS4 within the OpenPEPPOL network. e-Boks will expand their strong collaboration with the public authorities in Denmark, Sweden and Norway and support Difi with their Oxalis and ELMA sample implementations and further development towards AS4.

In 2016, the European Commission and OpenPEPPOL signed a Letter of Understanding, outlining the transition from AS2 to AS4 message exchange protocols. December 2017 marked the completion of the ‘Phase-in’ period as OpenPEPPOL now moves to the ‘Transition’ period (whereby AS4 becomes a mandatory transport protocol in the PEPPOL network). OpenPEPPOL was established after successful completion of the Pan-European Public Procurement Online (PEPPOL) project, which saw PEPPOL specifications being implemented in several European countries solving interoperability issues for electronic procurement.

The PEPPOL project remains one of the key Connecting Europe Success Stories. The Slovenian Supreme Court, which recently used CEF eDelivery to speed up the judicial process, is another. By using the CEF AS4 profile and CEF’s conformance testing platform the team at the Slovenian Supreme Court has succeeded in speeding up the judicial process, saved staff from mundane tasks and generated savings of over €4.5 million per year.

The European Commission monitors the uptake of CEF eDelivery, and the other CEF Building Blocks (eID, eInvoicing, eSignature and eTranslation), on the CEF Monitoring dashboard.

Want to learn more about CEF eDelivery and AS4?