There is no clear consensus on the shape of the future regulatory regime for the postal and delivery market, with one major factor being the diversity in user needs. Among European markets, for example, letter volumes per capita vary considerably between countries.

Faced with this diversity, policy makers and market players need to consider a range of difficult issues:

• how and whether to revise the regulatory framework and the definition of the universal service;
• what assets traditional postal operators can rely on to diversify their operations;
• does expansion into different business areas bring new regulatory challenges;
• extending regulation into the wider delivery market, i.e. related to e-commerce delivery; and
• how should the unprofitable areas of the universal service obligation be compensated.

These were just some of the key topics discussed at the 26th Conference on Postal and Delivery Economics which took place at the beginning of June in Croatia. The conference gathered representatives from postal operators, express couriers, trade unions, national regulatory authorities (NRAs) and the European Commission, as well as other industry experts and academics.