Postal workers yesterday demonstrated in scores of cities across Europe at plans by the EuropeanUnion to open the postal markets of 27 member states to full competition.
The UNI-Europa Post trade union said there had been stoppages and demonstration in over 300cities across the continent, as workers seek to block a proposed directive from the EuropeanCommission.
Today EU member states are to consider the proposal – to scrap the national posts’ lastmonopoly for mail under 50g on 1 January 2009 – at a transport and telecoms committee inLuxembourg. Germany, the current EU president, is pressing for a final decision to be taken at theEU leaders’ summit later this month.
UNI.Europa Post president Rolf Büttner said in an interview with French newspaper, L’Humanité, that a quarter of a million jobs had been lost in European state postal operators over thepast decade. Tens of thousands of jobs could be lost if the commission’s proposals are accepted.
But despite the demonstrations, the union’s call for a Europe-wide strike went largelyunheeded, according to news agencies. Little over 2% of France’s La Poste employees left theirposts, while no strikes were reported in Germany, the UK or Poland.
The European Parliament, which has co-decision powers with member states, is to consider theliberalisation proposal at its transport committee on 18 June. A delegation from UNI Europa met theparliament’s ‘rapporteur’ on postal liberalisation, German MEP Marcus Ferber, who has tabled acounter-proposal to the Commission, whereby the liberalisation would be postponed for two yearsuntil 2011 to give posts more time to adapt.
UNI wants the directive pushed back until 2012 to give national postal operators time to workout how the universal service they are legally obliged to provide can be financed.
It fears a scrapping of the universal service – where mail is delivered to and picked up fromall areas, villages and streets, no matter how remote their location – will lead to massiveredundancies.
EU observers are expecting little from today’s meeting of member states. The Council willmerely take note of slow progress on legislative proposals to amend the directive, the journalEuropolitics said.
