Germany pushes its EU neighbors to end monopoly on letters
In the early evening at Deutsche Post’s main sorting center in Frankfurt, 4.5 million letters pass through human hands before racing across conveyor belts and under electronic eyes that can read even barely legible handwriting to divine where the letter should go. By midnight, bright yellow plastic bins of letters land on trucks for overnight sprints across Europe.
Each mailing is a slice of the roughly euro 4 billion, or USD5.2 billion, that Deutsche Post takes in from its letter business each year — a third of its German revenues. Opening this business to competition would put as much of a fifth of that business at risk.
But when the German government ends Deutsche Post’s monopoly on simple letter delivery next Jan. 1, in the name of better service and lower prices for consumers, the postal service will have to open its sorting and delivery system to other players — in much the same way that former telecommunications and transportation monopolies have had to adjust.
For its part, Deutsche Post is fighting back, putting competitors on notice that access to its postal sorting and distribution network will come only if they meet the company’s specifications for humble letters — “no bills on beer coasters,” a spokesman, Hans Jürgen Thomeczek, said. And since this will be a business, and not a public utility, newcomers will have to pay for the privilege.
