Regulators launch antitrust probe against Spain’s Correos
Spanish regulators are now investigating national postal service Correos over claims it has abused its dominant position in the market. The National Competition Commission announced on Monday it is initiating disciplinary proceedings in response to complaints from private sector rival Unipost regarding “anti-competitive practices”.
The Commission suggested there was prima facie evidence that Correos had abused its position as universal service provider “by engaging in a possible margin squeeze when setting prices for network access by its competitors and retail prices that Correos applies to institutional customers for similar services”.
Spain’s postal market has been fully open to competition since January 2011, with private sector postal companies like Unipost able to collect and sort mail, using Correos for last mile delivery where they do not deliver themselves.
Unipost, a Barcelona-based network of private postal operators in which Deutsche Post has a 38% share, had a market share in 2006 of around 7-8%, and currently handles about 3m mail items a day.
The Commission said on Monday that its probe into Correos was looking at the pricing of its wholesale services, in which competitors can make use of the company’s last mile network for local delivery, and prices offered direct to mailers for business mail delivery.
There was reasonable suspicion that Correos had been narrowing its own margins to price its network competitors out of business, it said.
“In particular, Correos would be offering levels of discounts or rebates to institutional clients well above the discounts offered to Unipost and other competitors for similar services, which could exclude competitors from the market as Correos captures these institutional clients,” said the regulators of the allegations against Correos.
Under European postal laws, universal service providers cannot offer below-cost services to mail customers in order to maintain market share.
The Commission said it expected the investigation to take about 18 months to complete.
