Dutch Post to opt back in to EU cross-border deal?
Dutch postal operator TPG Post will join new talks on cross-border mail services, six years after it opted out of a European price agreement for delivering mail to and from other EU countries. Jan Sertons, distribution and international relations manager at TPG Post, said the company wanted to reach a “customer- and market-orientated solution” when the current REIMS agreement runs out at the end of 2006. He told a Brussels legal conference on February 10, organised by British trade publisher Informa, that staying out of REIMS meant TPG Post had won lower tariffs and better quality of service. The agreement is known by its French acronym.
The Dutch firm was the first EU public postal operator to step outside the REIMS II framework; it has now been joined by Britain’s Royal Mail. Going it alone meant TPG Post was forced to sign bilateral deals with the same postal operators it had refused to negotiate with on the REIMS deal. However, Mr Sertons said the advantages were “more satisfactory” than REIMS would have allowed. “The result of this all is that our quality of service, outbound and inbound, has increased to the highest level among the European operators,” he said.
The REIMS agreement essentially fixes prices for cross-border mail. This made the European Commission give it a special exemption from EU antitrust rules until the end of 2006 to avoid classification as a cartel (see 2814).
–EU enlargement and the growing amount of cross-border mail have helped alter TPG Post’s views on the pact. It has to discuss new bilateral pacts with 10 new EU members, renew older deals and face growing competition in its old monopoly market, i.e., letter post in the Netherlands.
Other European postal operators also have to facing up to the looming threat of liberalisation, which is supposed to take place across Europe by 2009. This is happening very slowly and at very different speeds across the EU.
