Brussels, 22/06/2000 (Agence Europe) - The Commissioner in charge of the Single Market, Frits Bolkestein, met with a barrage of criticism over his draft Directive for speeding up the liberalisation of postal services. On the occasion of a presentation to the European Parliament's Committee for Regional Affairs, Transport and Tourism, he declared that, "the postal industry is at the heart of the expanding European communications and logistics markets and like the other parts of these markets it has to modernise and be competitive or its long-term future, including its employment, will be threatened". After describing the mechanism of the draft Directive, he spoke about two aspects criticised by his opponents - employment and providing a universal service. He argued that employment was not a goal in itself for providing postal services, the goal being "meeting customer needs through which high employment can then be sustained". If nothing was done to adapt these services to the new technologies and new requirements, jobs risked being whittled down and not replaced. As for providing a universal service, he rejected the concerns that had been expressed, by France in particular, to see such a service watered down by liberalisation. He insisted that as far as the Commission was concerned, postal services in rural zones were absolutely justified and that the 1997 Directive gave Member States complete freedom for organising them as they saw fit. On the one hand, Member States would still have a reservable area of up to 50% of incumbent postal revenues that can be used to finance the universal service. In brief, Frits Bolkestein sees the draft Directive not as a radical change but was a "step-by-step approach", "a balancing act between the need to change and the time needed to bring change about".