Deregulation/Liberalisation/Privatisation

The Postal Directive (Directive 97/67/EC as amended by Directive 2002/39/EC) envisages the full opening of the EU postal market to competition by 1 January 2009. Article 7 (3) of the Postal Directive requires the Commission to “ finalise a prospective study which will assess, for each Member State, the impact on universal service of the full accomplishment of the postal internal market in 2009. Based on the study's conclusions, the Commission shall submit by 31 December 2006 a report to the European Parliament and the Council accompanied by a proposal confirming, if appropriate, the date of 2009 for the full accomplishment of the postal internal market or determining any other step in the light of the study's conclusions. "

To support this key assessment in the evolution of the postal market, the Commission ordered an external study. The resulting project was awarded to PwC and was undertaken between November, 2005 and May, 2006.

The objectives and methodology of this study were spelled out in the Terms of Reference for the Project, and amplified further in the initial stakeholder meeting that took place at the Commission on December 5, 2005. The agreed objectives of the study are:

• To assess whether the Universal Service Obligations (USOs) as laid down currently will still be relevant and appropriate in an open market;
• To evaluate risks and opportunities for the current universal service model and any proposed changes to the USO that might result from or be desirable under liberalisation;
• To assess how universal service can be safeguarded in an (open) internal market and assess whether any flanking measures would be considered appropriate.

Our approach

In order to provide a reasoned assessment to inform policy choice underlying these objectives, a survey instrument was designed to gather necessary data on the scope of the USO in various Member States (as well as other interdependent States such as EEA and EU-candidate states), on the specifics of each country concerning the readiness of the Universal Service Provider (USP) and the National Regulatory Authority (NRA) for full market opening (FMO) as well as on the views of the different stakeholders.

An important aspect of the applied methodology is the fact that the entire process was conceived as the interaction of two approaches: a conceptual or deductive one and an empirical or inductive one. At the beginning of the project the survey questionnaire was built on the conceptual and theoretical framework, derived from the postal economics literature and refined through the usual pre-testing of the survey with selected stakeholders.

After the Member States were visited, the results of the survey were compared with the results arising from the analytical framework, a comparison that generated questions within and across countries, leading to the conclusions and qualifications to these conclusions. This approach is illustrated in the figure below:

Figure 1: Project approach summary illustration

From a practical point of view, for the organisation of the country visits, the study progressed as if two parallel study processes of the introduction of FMO in each Member State had been undertaken: the model-based process, implemented by a Conceptual Team and the inductive one, implemented by a Country Team.

Both processes considered that FMO is introduced in the country and that a base case or benchmark option for the USO is imposed, but, apart from this common starting point, those two processes do their work and generate outputs through different paths.

In fact, the empirical approach is simply based on the interview and questionnaire data obtained from each respondent, while the deductive approach is the anticipated outcome in each Member State (or clusters of similar states) based on theoretical and conceptual developments derived from the postal economics literature. . The model was intended to provide both insights on individual countries as well as a tool for comparative assessment across Member States.

Figure 2: Project methodology summary: the simulations runs


The outcome

The outcome was well received by the European Commission, but also in the European Postal sector.

It was presented at many occasions, and in many member states.

Based on that work, the European Commission proposed a new Postal Directive , that was debated in the European Parliament in 2007.

The third Postal Directive was adopted early 2008, and has now to be transposed in the national regulations of all member states.