Brussels, 24/03/2014 (Agence Europe) - The speed and reliability of first-class mail delivery in Europe beats the European Commission's targets (set out in the 1997 postal directive). On average, it takes 2.2 days for a letter to be delivered in the EU.
Research published on 21 March (entitled UNEX) by International Post Corporation (IPC) reveals that the quality of letter mail service in Europe continues to far exceed both the European Union's speed objective of 85% of intra-EU mail delivery within three days of posting, and its reliability objective of 97% within five days. In 2013, 92.5% of international priority and first-class letters were delivered within three days of posting and 98.2% within five days. IPC President Herbert-Michael Zapf said: “2013 was the 16th consecutive year that the end-to-end performance for priority letter mail in Europe exceeded both the speed and reliability objectives set by the 1997 Postal Directive”. The results for 2013 were based on some 200,000 test letters in the 28 EU member states, together with Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. (MD)