Opportunities for good basic service remain intact

Swiss Post acknowledges the decisions reached by the Council of States with regard to the Postal Act. It considers the bill, as approved today by the Council of States, to be an acceptable basis for safeguarding a nationwide basic service that is both efficient and in line with consumer requirements. Swiss Post wants to offer a nationwide basic service that also takes peripheral regions into account. The Postal Act offers the opportunity to foster a modern, competitive Swiss Post by allowing the company to adapt the basic service to demographic trends, customer needs and technological change.

However, this is subject to the proviso that Swiss Post's entrepreneurial freedom is not hampered and that its scope of action is increased. This is all the more necessary as the letter market is contracting, and the basic service will also become less profitable as a result of competitors who may enter the market. Swiss Post wants to develop growth areas and thus attempt to contribute to financing the basic service. From this point of view, Swiss Post considers it unsatisfactory that PostFinance – according to the draft of the Postal Organization Act, which the Council of States has not yet discussed – will still not be allowed to offer mortgages and loans on its own. Furthermore, Swiss Post does not agree with the Council of States' concept for the financing of the basic service, which stipulates that if Swiss Post is unable to finance the costs of the basic service from its own resources, these costs will only be compensated if they are disproportionately high. This kind of financing mechanism will result in a unilateral burden on Swiss Post, compared with its competitors and will also lead to considerable scope for interpretation and therefore legal uncertainty. Swiss Post believes that it makes sense to create a compensation fund to finance the basic service. It is also important for Swiss Post that it can negotiate access to its infrastructure on a bilateral basis with its competitors, as envisaged by the Council of States.

Swiss Post hopes that the bills will be improved in this regard. For Swiss Post it is therefore even more important that the basic service be defined in terms of efficiency and commercial autonomy. Requirements which exceed the measures defined by the Council of States have the potential to endanger the precarious balance between the definition and financing of the basic service and will thus be rejected by Swiss Post.

Market liberalization requires supporting measures

Swiss Post is aware of the Council of States' desire to completely deregulate the letters market over the next few years. This said, it would prefer a transition period of three years following the enforcement of the new law. Swiss Post has not entirely rejected the idea of full market deregulation, providing the competition is accompanied by supporting measures. This includes, in particular, fair employment conditions across the entire postal market. These can be best ensured with an industry-wide collective employment contract (CEC), which Swiss Post intends to offer as a socially responsible employer. In the Postal Organization Act, Swiss Post would also expect its legal status to be adapted to the private sector by turning Swiss Post Group into a public limited company and PostFinance into a public company under private law, owned by Swiss Post and supervised by FINMA.

--- END press release Opportunities for good basic service remain intact ---

  Die Schweizerische Post AG (company entry)