European postal operators take stock of Parliament’s improvements
12 European postal operators take stock of the European Parliament’s improvements brought to the proposal for a third postal directive.
The European Parliament has adopted, with a broad majority, amendments bringing significant changes to the initial proposal of the Commission.
Taking into consideration the great uncertainty of universal service financing and the risks of social dumping, the European Parliament has proposed substantial improvements on these two points and asks for the postponement of the date of realisation of the Internal Market in order to cope with them. The repeated reference to the economic role of universal postal services as well as to their contribution to the territorial and social cohesion is to be welcomed. It recalls one of the original objectives of the Community postal policy, thus balancing the liberalisation process.
However, the postal operators from Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland and Slovakia want to stress that the postponement alone does not address the many legal, economic and technical questions which remain as acute as ever.
It is therefore extremely important to deepen the discussions on those points.
As a consequence, the signatories call the Council to follow the cautious approach adopted by the European Parliament and to enrich the directive proposal by addressing the remaining issues in order to properly manage the next liberalisation steps.
