Brussels wants to protect couriers from French post office domination
The European Commission has given the French government two months in which to set up an independent regulatory body to ensure that fair trading reigns in the French postal services market. More specifically, the new authority will prevent the French post office (La Poste) from imposing tariffs and conditions on this market to the detriment of private courier companies.
So far, say observers, the European competition commission is not convinced that La Poste’s position in the express-mail market is neutral. On the contrary, they point to the “conflict of interest” generated by La Poste’s own involvement in this market via its Datapost, Dynapost and Mikros subsidiaries. The European Court of Justice has ruled, meanwhile, that failure to separate a state-owned company from the authority which regulates that company’s sector of activity is an infringement of European Union regulations.