Liberalisation of Postal Services and Their Financing in the Future

This article analyses the issues in the process of the EU postal services market liberalisation, which is in the final stage of its legal basis drafting process. The acceptance of the legal basis by competent EU institutions will largely define the postal services market liberalisation method, which is to be carried out by all EU Member States in a given period of time. For the final step of the liberalisation the authors (eu expert bodies) of the legal basis draft proposal have managed to maintain a relatively high standard of universal postal services (delivery every working day and at least five days a week for EU addresses, and short delivery times) and in addition to these also foreseen various financing methods. The latter are based on solutions taken from other sectors where the liberalisation process has been recently concluded and where a sector is also subject to the universal service obligation. Even though those financing models are more or less effective in other sectors, they have been subject to many concerns in a public debate on changes in postal sector. The key concerns relate to the foreseen mechanisms of universal service financing, the regulation of access to the public postal network, and the financing of the public postal network maintenance as well as development. The best way to overcome partially unproductive public debates on the issue is to start making factual and precise estimates of the effect of changes presented in this article by applying simplified financing mechanisms of the universal service. These mechanisms will need the input of specific data which will take into the account all relevant traits of every single EU Member State.