It’s been interesting to participate in the debate over the transformation of the American postal system while having the luxury to merely observe what’s going on in other nations around the world — most particularly in Europe.
Unlike the United States, the European Union has been much more unwilling to continue granting its members’ postal services monopoly power. In fact, if the EU keeps to its declared objective, there won’t be a post in Europe with even a trace of a monopoly by 2009. And there are facets of the postal argument in Europe that signal the blurring of lines that traditionally have distinguished posts from their private-sector courier competitors.
For instance, in the EU, Brussels is putting on pressure to ensure that posts and couriers are treated the same over the application of value-added tax. On the Continent, the services of both posts and couriers are subject to this tax. In the United Kingdom, the call already has gone out from the British postal regulator to subject posts and couriers to equal VAT treatment. Only in this instance, the regulator would seek to exempt both.
The blurring of distinctions between posts and couriers is likely to continue. The rules governing the customs treatment of courier and post cross-border shipments is a topic of considerable discussion not only at the United Nations’ Universal Postal Union but also at the International Trade Commission here in the states. Indeed, it’s almost impossible to go to a policy meeting that touches on some element of international postal services that is not also attended by those who represent much broader trade issues.
Even though a presidential commission already has weighed in on what the American postal system should look like in the years ahead, it’s still too early to tell whether the broader matter of posts vs. couriers has been taken completely out of play. While nation-states are known to defend vigorously their claims to sovereignty — including the autonomy signified by their national posts — it’s becoming much more common to find that countries are willing to bargain away some elements of those claims when a greater national interest (read trade and profits) is at stake.
The current discussion over postal reform could take on quite a different character if issues ordinarily relegated to an international arena find their way into what seemed until now to be essentially a domestic debate.
GENE A. DEL POLITO is president of the Association for Postal Commerce (PostCom) in Arlington, VA.
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