Brussels, 11/05/2011 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 10 May the European Commission announced that it has extended its investigations, underway since 2007, into the former German national postal monopoly, Deutsche Post AG. This extension related to subsidies paid by the German state to the business to “cover the costs of the pensions of those employees, past and present, who have a civil servant status”, the press release states.
The German authorities argue that these subsidies are compatible with rules on European state aid as they compensate for the “legacy costs” from the time when Deutsche Post was a public monopoly. However, the Commission has discovered that at the same time, Germany authorised an increase in regulated letter prices in order to cover Deutsche Post's pension costs and is concerned that this translates into overcompensation to the detriment of competitors. An assessment of these two sources of compensation would indicate that Deutsche Post effectively benefited, thanks to the subsidies, from social contribution rates that were 10 to 15% below the rates which competitors had to pay.
The investigation into Deutsche Post was opened in September 2007 further to complaints from a number of competitors, including UPS, which accused the company of benefiting from disproportionate subsidies, notably to compensate for these pension costs between 1990 and 2007. The Commission then decided to examine “all public measures to have benefited Deutsche Post and its predecessor, Postdienst, since 1989”. (F.G./transl.fl)