Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-02-18-Speech-5-040"
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"en.20000218.3.5-040"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, people used to be summoned to demonstrations by letter or telegram; nowadays this is done by e-mail and via websites! Incidentally, many thanks to Mr Scharping, the Chairman of the European Social Democrats, for withdrawing the call to take part in demonstrations in Austria from his homepage and therefore not advising anarchists in favour of violent action to go to Vienna tomorrow.
It is clear that electronic mail, electronic commerce is going to become extremely important in the future. I also see this as offering special potential for the existing postal service. We know that until the year 2002 it will not be possible to fill some 1.2 million jobs in the field of electronic commerce because we do not have the skilled workers needed for this market. I believe that this opens up very extensive employment potential in the postal administration in particular, which can prepare its existing staff for this very interesting challenge by means of training and further training measures.
Of course the existing rural post offices also have a strategic advantage, because they are so densely distributed throughout Europe. Even the tiniest village has a post office and in future e-commerce will make far more use of the post because many people will order goods by e-mail and through websites and also send bills and so forth by that means. That is why the physical handling of these transactions will also become increasingly important. The collection, sorting, transportation and delivery of mail will take on an entirely new dimension. I believe that in future we must seize this opportunity.
As politicians we must devote special attention to defending consumer interests. We want our consumers to obtain as much as possible for the wages they are paid. That faces us with the very important challenge of offering the consumers cheaper postal services. We should take a look – thinking also of benchmarking – at what the consumer currently pays for an employee in the existing postal services and what he pays for an employee in the private sector. This transparency is also very important for the unions, for how can a union official who has to represent his members in a private company compete with a union official who has to represent his members in the postal service? I think it is important for the unions too to operate under uniform economic and social framework conditions so as to achieve the best results for their members on a basis of justice, fairness and solidarity.
But I also believe that in future we will have to make the universal service sufficiently attractive. We should define the universal service precisely, establish efficiency criteria and then issue invitations to tender. In rural areas where we have real fears that these services really can no longer be cost-effective, I believe the decision should be taken by a regulator who can lay down fair and decent tendering conditions, so that all the market forces, and of course the existing postal services too, can compete here and so that we can pursue the best and most efficient consumer strategies.
I believe we must avoid further subsidies and should try to ensure that the private supplier and the consumer benefit from the new system."@en1
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