PEPPOL eDelivery (CEF building block)

PEPPOL eDelivery is the CEF document-exchange building block based on PEPPOL transport and AS4.

Definition

eDelivery is one of the reusable building blocks of the EU CEF (Connecting Europe Facility) programme. It provides a standard framework to exchange documents and data securely and interoperably between administrations, and with businesses.

Its best-known implementation relies on the PEPPOL transport infrastructure and the AS4 messaging protocol, which provides encryption, signing and reliable receipts between access points.

Role and interoperability

The goal of eDelivery is to let heterogeneous systems communicate without a bilateral agreement for every pair of actors. By reusing PEPPOL components:

• Each actor connects once to a compliant access point.
• It can then exchange with every other participant on the network.
• Transport (AS4) is decoupled from business content (invoices, public procurement, etc.).

This approach supports many European use cases, including e-invoicing and electronic public procurement.

Good to know

Distinguish the transport (eDelivery / AS4, the 'how') from the content (the BIS and document semantics, the 'what'). eDelivery says nothing about the business format of documents: it only guarantees their secure delivery between access points.