Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-02-18-Speech-5-048"
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"en.20000218.3.5-048"2
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"Like Mr Radwan, I am glad that Commissioner Monti is here rather than Commissioner Bolkestein because I believe that he can explain to us certain aspects relating to competition.
I do not know if Mr Monti is aware of the judgement of the Court of Justice of the European Communities of last week, 10 February, which recognised the possibility of the German postal service being in a dominant position as a result of its holding a postal monopoly.
Competition policy will no doubt have to be applied to this sector before the coming liberalisation – before 1 January 2003 – because at the moment the tendency is to divert mail via countries with lower postage rates. This has consequences for free competition between the different postal administrations.
In the event that liberalisation is brought about throughout the European Union, what consequences would that have for free competition? For the moment, it appears that, in the only country where liberalisation has taken place – Sweden – there has been a 59% increase in the price of postal services. We do not know what will happen in each of the countries where liberalisation is going to take place. It is likely that postal liberalisation will lead to greater cost differences between countries, which will no doubt have implications for competition, which will not only affect the cost of the postal service but also the establishment of installations. For example, there are currently companies which set up in Holland because the postal charges are lower than in Germany and the same may happen in the future.
I therefore wonder whether the Commission’s package on postal liberalisation will include the preservation of free competition, because it is very possible that – as has happened in most sectors in the Community today – it will lead to concentrations of large companies which will cancel out the benefits of this theoretical liberalisation. At the moment, in services which are not theoretically liberalised – as is the case with national postal services – there is a basic form of liberalisation, which is agreed within the framework of the Universal Postal Union, allowing for lower tariffs. In a service which is theoretically liberalised, free competition may disappear as a result of the concentration of the service amongst large companies abusing their dominant position, agreements between companies and other similar circumstances.
I would therefore advise Commissioner Monti to deal with the issue of postal liberalisation, taking strict account of free competition, because I believe that this will probably become a very worrying issue in the future. My prediction is that the liberalised postal services will probably be much less competitive than the current public postal services."@en1
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