Tag: Deutsche Post

Germany’s Federal Cartel Office still aims to abolish Deutsche Post World Net AG’s monopoly on letter delivery as of January 1 and rejects proposals to selectively allow only some competitors on Germany’s mail market, the Office’s new head Bernhard Heitzer told WirtschaftsWoche magazine in an interview.

‘Limitations that are dubbed reciprocity clauses should be taken with a pinch of salt,’ Heitzer told the magazine in an interview to be published on Monday.

Such clauses would limit expansion by European postal companies to those firms whose home market has already been liberalized, he said.

‘Such politically motivated limitations have proven a major obstacle in international trade too many times,’ Heitzer said.

He said he understands why Deutsche Post opposes the liberalization of Germany’s postal market, as a ‘monopoly is always comfortable and lucrative’ for a company.

But Deutsche Post is ‘set up well and does not have to be afraid of competition,’ Heitzer said.

The German armed forces Bundeswehr and Deutsche Post have marked the 15-year anniversary of Feldpost, the German military mail service, at a celebratory event. For one-and-a-half decades Deutsche Post has been providing the link between Bundeswehr soldiers serving overseas and home. Currently it is delivering letters, packages, and parcels from home to some 8,000 soldiers serving in Bosnia Herzegovina, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Georgia and Uzbekistan.

The collaboration between Deutsche Post and the Bundeswehr began in 1955, the year in which the Bundeswehr was established. The first mail was sent overseas in 1992 when the Bundeswehr was deployed on a humanitarian mission to Cambodia. The name “Feldpost” was used officially for the first time one year later. Feldpost offers to military personnel everything that Deutsche Post would also provide at home: as well as transporting letters, packages, and parcels soldiers can also carry out their Postbank transactions at Feldpost offices. All this is available to Bundeswehr service personnel at regular at domestic rates.

Deutsche Post AG is planning to cut 800-1000 jobs at its mail operations after merging its parcel business with the mail division, according to Handelsblatt, citing a company spokesman.

The job cuts will affect those in the personnel division, controlling and IT, the source added.

He said there will be no mandatory job cuts but that the reductions would be achieved by offering other positions elsewhere within the group.