Business call for liberalisation of Dutch postal services market

Selekt Mail Nederland (SMN), a Deutsche Post subsidiary, has recently urged the Dutch Government to fully open up its postal market to competition. SMN says that Dutch postal provider TPG’s monopoly should be reduced to all letters weighing less than 50g on January 1, 2005 – not 2006 as the EU Postal Directive requires – and that there should be full market-opening in 2007. The pro-liberalisation Free and Fair Post Initiative (FFPI), which brings together users and competitors of public postal operators, has strongly backed the call. Under Directive 2002/39/EC, the current letter monopoly threshold is 100g, although Member States are free to open up their entire market to competition if they want to. So far, only Sweden has done so, while the United Kingdom is hinting it will open up completely in 2006 or 2007. The European Commission is due to table another liberalisation Directive around the same time but it remains to be seen whether a deadline for final liberalisation will be included.