Brussels, 15^th September 2016

Today, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the application of the Postal Services Directive, last reviewed in 2008.

Postal operators provide a universal service delivering letters, parcels and other printed media across Europe, from remote villages to city centres. This universal service obligation lies at the heart of our business and sets us apart from our competitors.

Jean-Paul Forceville, Chairman of PostEurop – which represents national postal operators across Europe – said: “We welcome the European Parliament’s recognition that the Postal Services Directive provides member states with the flexibility necessary to address local specificities and ensure the long-term sustainability of the universal service obligation (USO). Each member state defines the USO to suit its own circumstances and this enables postal operators to innovate to meet new demands and the ever-changing lifestyles of our customers.”

Moreover, the resolution rightly recognises that parcel delivery markets are highly competitive, innovative and fast growing. On average in the EU, e-retailers and consumers can now choose from eight domestic and seven international operators.  

As online purchases grew dramatically over the past decade, enormous progress has been made by the industry to service customers and SMEs across borders.  Postal operators scaled up their operations and increased interoperability to deal with a much larger number of parcels. Many new services are now on offer (same-day-delivery, 24/7 parcel lockers, Track&Trace, etc).

Our investments are geared toward answering customers’ demands for fast, reliable and convenient parcel delivery amid fierce market competition.

Today’s resolution concludes – with good reason – that any new regulation must take into account these actual market conditions. Unjustified regulation and additional bureaucracy run the risk of hampering existing market dynamics.

Jean-Paul Forceville, Chairman of PostEurop stressed: “Members of PostEurop welcome the Parliament’s recommendation to focus on addressing inordinate disparities in the pricing of some cross-border services, rather than to conduct an untargeted horizontal sweep on all prices. However, mandating third party access to the logistic networks of postal operators is unnecessary because fierce competition already exists in the parcel market. This proposal from the Commission must be very carefully and closely examined.”

The resolution originates from a draft parliamentary report by MEP Markus Ferber (DE, EPP). It follows a report by the European Commission on the application of the Postal Services Directive published in November 2015. This autumn, the European Parliament will also examine the Commission’s proposed Regulation on cross-border parcel delivery services, and PostEurop and European postal operators look forward to continuing to work with members of the European Parliament on this.

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Notes to the editors

PostEurop is the trade association representing European national postal operators, which are either partially state-owned or used to be state-owned. It has 52 members in 49 countries.

European postal operators are present in all 28 EU Member States and in EEA countries. They serve 175,000 retail outlets, employ 2 million people, operate 258 million delivery points, collect from 720,000 street postboxes and account for 1 percent of the EU’s entire GDP[1].

Parcel delivery is a cornerstone of the fast-growing e-commerce industry and a crucial pillar of the EU’s Digital Single Market. Postal operators connect SMEs and e-retailers with citizens across Europe – from London to Bucharest, from Lapland to the Greek islands.

Every year, e-retailers and customers deliver 4 billion parcels through the post to their customers, friends and families across Europe.

For more information about how postal operators contribute to the growth of e-commerce in Europe, visit our website: www.Deliver4Europe.eu

We are also happy to engage with you on this topic on Twitter: @Deliver4Europe

For further information, please contact:

Aurélie Caulier: aureliecaulier@gpluseurope.com ; Tel: +32 489 33 59 74

Ana Panchevska: anapanchevska@gpluseurope.com ; Tel: +32 470 90 16 07