Swiss authorities have released plans to fully liberalise the country’s postal market in two stagesover the coming decade, and change Swiss Post’s legal status. The move means Switzerland will lag
behind most EU countries in fully opening up the domestic mail market to competition.The federal government plans to publish a postal reform bill for consultation at the start of2008. It is expected to propose reducing Swiss Post’s monopoly on domestic mail from 100g to 50g in2011. “After a period of two to five years, Parliament would pass a law on full-scaleliberalisation that would be liable to public referendum,” the Swiss ministry for environment,transport, energy and communications announced on Friday.
Swiss authorities noted that they had already started to reform the postal sector and werefollowing developments in the EU, where the postal market is due to be fully liberalised in 2011.The ministry will also conduct a study into the financial implications of the market liberalisationand publish the results by the end of this year.
The draft law would specify “industry-typical” working conditions for all postal operators(Swiss Post and private competitors). Swiss Post would be required to negotiate a collective tariffagreement but it would be up to companies and unions to agree on an industry-wide pay deal. Financing of the universal service obligation would if necessary be secured through a fund or statepayments, the ministry stated.
Swiss Post would be reformed from a public corporation into a limited stock company with alegal requirement for majority state ownership. This would enable Swiss Post to cooperate withother companies in Europe and enter into alliances.
In response, Swiss Post declared that it supported the measures to gradually open up themarket with fair market conditions, and that it was committed to retaining a quality postal servicefor the country’s public and business.
