Brussels, 26/10/2000 (Agence Europe) - This week, the partisans of postal service liberalisation in Europe launched a campaign in Brussels in favour of fair and equitable competition, by seeing the solution for improving prices and quality. The "Free and fair Post Initiative" (FFPI), which has for the moment a dozen member, including EuroCommerce (association representing retailers), the postal operator United Parcel Service (UPS) and the national employers federations, thus intend to counter balance the arguments of the opponents to liberalisation. It clearly spoke in favour of the draft Directive presented by the European Commission, on the initiative of the European Commissioner Frits Bolkenstein, for the Liberalisation of 30% of the postal traffic in 2003 and, in the long-term, the total opening of the postal services market to competition.
"The transfer of the postal service will take place, wanted or not", explained the President of the FFPI Philippe Bodson. This change is pushed forward by the new information technologies and e-commerce. Th only way of controlling it is a progressive liberalisation. The FFPI calls for the setting of a deadline for the total opening of the postal sector to competition and sees the users interests in this. "The absence of cut off date deprives the process of a necessary dynamic", feels Philippe Bodson. 2007 will in his opinion be a reasonable deadline for the completion of the liberalisation process.
The FFPI does not challenge the maintaining of "universal service", to be defined at a national level. On the other hand it challenges the need to maintain a sector of monopoly to finance these basic services. According to the association, the financing of the universal service could take place either through a fund to which the postal operators will have to contribute, or through State subsidies. The cost of these services should, regardless, be in the accounts in a completely transparent manner.
Public postal operators propose to reduce to 150gr the ceiling
in the field reserved to the monopolies
On the sidelines to the European Parliament plenary session, in Strasbourg, the representatives of the Post Office, the British public postal operator, for their part, came seeking to MEPs support to counter the European Commission's planned liberalisation. During a meeting organised on their initiative, the British Federation of Sub Postmasters was concerned over the possible effects of the plan for rural communities. The Post office proposed that the limit on weight beyond which mail is open to competition be from the present 350 grams to 150 grams (instead of the 50 grams proposed by the Commission. Nine other public postal operators are favourably, including La Post (France) and Post Italiane (Italy) it indicated.
Many MEPs have expressed with us their concern that the draft Directive on the postal sector makes it impossible to distribute post and parcels to all addresses" felt the Post Office in a press release. "The Directive as it stands takes away from postal administration the basic finances they need to provide the daily delivery (…) The Directive should be amended to ensure that the needs of EU citizens come first", notably stated Brian Simpson, Labour MEP, rapporteur in 1997 on the first Directive on postal services.