The European postal regulators group (ERGP) has made clear in its medium term strategy for 2020-2022 that it wishes to place a greater emphasis on ensuring strong competition in postal and delivery markets.

The ERGP’s draft workplan for 2021 contains four work items to promote and monitor competition in the sector, including a review on the relevance (or not) of introducing ex ante regulation in the sector.

Up to now, few regulators have used the ex ante approach to regulate postal markets, although there have been notable examples in Malta and the Netherlands, while the Italian regulator has just reviewed the parcels delivery markets, finding Amazon to have significant market power.

Postal operators have been vigorously opposed to ex ante regulation, arguing that this has no place either in declining letters markets or in already competitive parcels markets.

Cullen International’s Postal and Competition Law intelligence services continually track and compare competition issues across postal and delivery markets in Europe. We analyse EU and national level antitrust, merger and state aid cases in the postal sector.

We also benchmark and report on new developments on downstream access, the application and comparison of employment rules to competing postal providers, and the postal VAT exemption.

To access our analysis of the ERGP’s 2021 work programme, please click on “Access the full content” or on “Request Access”, in case you are not subscribed to our Postal service.