European Union members have agreed to begin opening their postal delivery markets to competition, reducing the dominance of national mail monopolies, according to wire service reports.
The compromise, which was worked on for about a year is estimated to open about 40% of the bloc’s postal market by 2006.
The deal is seen as a halfway point between those, mostly northern, countries that wanted full competition on letter delivery and those that fear job losses and higher postage prices if national monopolies are broken.
This agreement still requires the endorsement of the European Parliament.
This latest deal stems from a proposals made in February 2000 to further de-monopolize European Union postal services. [See DIRECT Newsline, Feb.22, 2000].
For the past few years, some European post offices
