Swiss Post needs entrepreneurial flexibility to provide a good basic service

For Swiss Post, providing a good basic service encompassing both postal services and payment transactions will still be its raison d’être in the future and it remains committed to doing just that. The post office network is of strategic importance to Swiss Post and has an important entrepreneurial value. Over the long term, Swiss Post aims to provide the basic service without any financial compensation. To do this, it requires a certain amount of flexibility in order to adapt its services to customer behaviour, technological developments and demographic trends. Swiss Post remains committed to providing a good public service for both postal services and payment transactions. It aims to function as a provider of a postal service, even in free competition with other players, that meets the needs of its customers. To do this, it requires entrepreneurial freedom. This includes the option of developing new sources of income, for instance by expanding the business activities of PostFinance. The financial arm of Swiss Post now manages over CHF 70 billion in customer deposits. If PostFinance were able to lend part of this money in Switzerland in the form of corporate loans, mortgages or syndicated loans, Switzerland as a financial centre would be even stronger, and Swiss Post’s investment risk would be lower.

Rooting the infrastructure mandate at the constitutional level, as set out in the initiative of the Kommunikation union, would limit the state’s room for manoeuvre too greatly. In order to be able to react quickly to changing market conditions or changes in customer behaviour, the infrastructure mandate, as provided for by the Federal Council, should be set out in the Postal Act and Postal Ordinance. It is important that the basic service can be financed by Swiss Post over the long term. Complete deregulation of the letter market should therefore only take place once the implications of the new postal legislation are sufficiently known.

Changed operating conditions

Swiss Post has been facing drastic declines in volume at its post office counters for years – 47% in the case of letters and parcels and 17% in the case of payments since 2000. By setting up postal agencies based on the “village shop post office ” model in recent years, it has been able to offer its services at locations where the post offices had to be replaced with an alternative solution owing to demand being too low. Swiss Post rejects the unions’ call for a moratorium. It is sticking to its planned procedure of reviewing the status of post offices and will involve the local authorities and employees concerned at an early stage.