Brussels, 17/11/2000 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has opened an in-depth inquiry concerning the creation of two global joint ventures for international mail between national postal service operators, The Post Office (TPO, Great Britain), TNT Post Group NV (TPG, Netherlands), and Singapore Post Private Limited (SPPL, Singapore). With one called Delta and the other NewCo, these two companies will provide outbound cross-border mail services for business customers and outbound cross-border parcel services. Delta will be active world-wide with the exception of the Asia Pacific region, which will be covered by NewCo.
The Commission has serious concerns about Delta that could hold a dominant position on the British and Dutch markets for outbound cross-border mail. The activities of the joint venture will be added to those of TPG and TPO which will continue to provide these services to their respective home countries, which will entail, in these countries, combined market shares at least ten times higher than that of the next largest competitor. The immediate consequence of this will be the disappearance of a powerful competitor in both the United Kingdom and in the Netherlands. There are also risks that the operation could have adverse vertical effects in the United Kingdom and in the Netherlands, that might lead to a foreclosure effect. In addition to PPOs, consolidators also offer outbound cross-border business mail services. These consolidators collect and group outbound cross-border mail for a given destination then negotiate a special tariff with public postal operators with which they collaborate with a view to distributing the "consolidated" mail in the country of destination. Through this move, one of the main public postal operators to which the consolidators have access in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands will be removed. Under such conditions, the Commission decided to give itself another four months in which to study the matter in greater detail.