Britannia Radio

POSTAL SERVICES : DOES EU DIRECTIVE 97/67/EC of 15 DECEMBER 1997 DEMAND PRIVATISATION of POSTAL SERVICES?
According to this report:

"The December 1997 EU Directive on postal services (97/67/EC) requires all Member States to guarantee a universal postal service that covers at least the collection, classification, transport and distribution of postal items of up to two kilos and parcels of up to 10 kilos, as well as registered mail and insured-value mail. These requirements cover both domestic services and cross-border services. However, if considered necessary for the efficient operation of the service, Member States may reserve domestic, urgent or ordinary correspondence weighing less than 350 grammes for a commercial operator. The same is true for cross-border mail and direct advertising."

According to the Department of Trade and Industry's (DTI) information on postal services -- where you can also find copies of the full postal directives -- the Postal Services (EC Directive) Regulations 2002 [S.I.2002/3050] modifies certain sections of the Postal Services Act 2000 in order to facilitate full transposition the new European Postal Directive (2002/39/EC) -- this amended Directive (97/67/EC).

The regulations to implement the new Postal Directive were laid before Parliament on 11 December 2002 coming into force on 1 January 2003. The transposed Directive reduced the area that may be reserved from 350g to 100 grams, from 1 January 2003 and will further reduce it to 50grams from 1 January 2006.

While this EU Directive does not demand privatisation of postal services, it does open it up, as an option.

So, is mail by rail incompatible with the EU and UK government's plans for postal privatisation?
Several readers have suggested speculatively that a possible reason mail is being shunted off the rails and onto the roads is because the UK government is intending to open postal services up to privatisation, and it would therefore remain untenable for Royal Mail to continue to enjoy the competitive advantage of delivering mail by rail. Thus, Royal Mail's competitive advantage must be removed. Or perhaps, Royal Mail may indeed consider the mail trains to be a potential financial and physical liability, when faced with more effective road delivery by its competitors....

However, the Royal Mail Press Office told Sovereignty that this "wasn't something we would want to comment on" because as far as they were concerned, "the rationale is simply to ensure an improved distribution network in terms of improved efficiency and cost."