Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-09-09-Speech-4-050"
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"en.20100909.3.4-050"2
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"Mr President, the issue of opening postal services up to competition has raised concern in many Member States about how their availability and quality might be preserved.
For example, in a large but sparsely populated country like Finland, there is a danger that competition will only be of interest in the most densely populated urban areas, where they can derive an economic benefit. On the other hand, the costs of delivering the mail in the unprofitable sparsely populated areas will have to be met by society.
Delivery costs in sparsely populated areas are on average four times higher than in builtup areas. In extreme cases the difference might be anything up to 10 times more. Even so, in Finland too some postal services have now been opened up to competition.
The directive attempts to safeguard the standard of services by means of obligations imposed on the holder of a universal service obligation. I would like to hear the Commissioner’s view regarding how competition can be genuine and on an equal footing if the demands concerning the quality and standard of service placed on the holder of the USO are significantly more stringent than those placed on the competition. How are the costs incurred in the provision of the universal service to be met?
The directive proposes funding options, of which the simplest is to finance losses out of taxes. This, however, will probably not be seen as a sensible move, given the current state of public finances. The situation in Finland threatens to become nothing less than absurd. The holder of the USO there is a profitable stateowned company, whose annual profits of roughly EUR 100 million would be converted into state budgetary expenditure representing more or less the same amount, so that a few companies would be able to make a profit from the lucrative markets in the cities and towns. This could be very difficult to explain away to the taxpayer.
Finally, I would like to ask the Commissioner whether it will be possible within the framework of this directive to legislate nationally on, for example, the charge on delivering a postal service, payable by all operators in the sector in order to guarantee services impartially and in unprofitable areas too."@en1
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