Abstract
The European Commission Notice (98/C39/02) on the application of the competition rules to the postal sector (“the Commission Notice”), together with Directive 97/67/EC,2 defines the way competition rules should be applied to the postal sector. These rules, once applied to specific cases, often appear to be too general and open to contradicting interpretations. This is not an issue concerning the scope of the law in itself. Indeed, it is related to a key policy issue: how to pursue competition and universal service obligations at the same time. In addition, the National Authorities responsible for developing public policy in the postal sector (the national regulatory authority and the Antitrust authority) appear to pursue their tasks following a set of priorities which may result in the creation of conflicting policy decisions.
The views expressed in this paper are those of the author only and do not necessarily represent the opinions of Poste Italiane SpA. He is grateful to Michele Giardino, Alessandra Perrazzelli and Monika Plum for their comments on an earlier draft.
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Comandini, V.V. (2000). Antitrust versus Regulation Issues in the Postal Sector. In: Crew, M.A., Kleindorfer, P.R. (eds) Current Directions in Postal Reform. Topics in Regulatory Economics and Policy Series, vol 35. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4481-4_13
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