3.12 Universal Postal Union (UPU)

Context

The 9 October 1874 Treaty of Berne founded what was then designated the General Postal Union; Portugal was among the 22 countries that signed the treaty. This intergovernmental organisation took on its current designation, Universal Postal Union (UPU), in 1878, and in 1948 was constituted as a specialised agency of the United Nations.

The UPU was set up to stimulate collaboration and development in the international postal sector. Its activities centre on the encouragement of co-operation, to promote postal development, and postal service quality.

The UPU supreme body is the Congress, which meets every five years to review international postal legislation. Its functions are eminently legislative, although the most recent trend has been to delegate increasingly more powers to the two Councils, with the Congress mainly playing a role of defining strategic and overall policies.

The Postal Operations Council (POC) meets once a year and is constituted by forty elected members. At the last UPU Congress in 1999, Portugal was elected Chairman of the POC, which among other issues deals with operational, economic and commercial aspects of the international postal service, revises the regulations approved after each Congress, encourages the introduction of new postal products and addresses recommendations to the member countries with regard to technological and operational processes. 

The Council of Administration meets once a year and is constituted by 41 members; its main mission is to assure continuity of the UPU work between Congresses and to oversee its regulatory, administrative, legislative and legal activities.

Activity pursued in 2002

In 2002, ICP-ANACOM actively participated in the work of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) as a member state and postal administration, particularly in the groups, commissions and plenary sessions of the Councils (Council of Administration and Postal Operations Councial) and in the Strategy Conference.

In 2002, the UPU continued the work related to the Union’s reform in accordance with recommendations of the high level group set up by the 1999 Beijing Congress. This reform seeks to integrate in its work all active stakeholders in the sector, to enable the study of pertinent and current issues that promote postal market co-operation and development, in order to ensure the provision of universal service and enhanced service quality. To this end, topics related to the provision of universal service and respective quality were debated, along with the evolution of the market and its players, the new markets and postal products, the postal reform process in member countries, the reservations to Acts of the Union, the definition of postal administration, the extra-territorial offices of exchange and the licensing systems in effect in the member countries.

In October 2002, the UPU held a Strategy conference whose aim was to gather postal market leaders at regulatory and operational level and allow the participation of all interested parties, to discuss possible postal sector strategies for the coming decade. The conference’s recommendations consisted of the need for more active participation by all players in the sector (governments, public and private operators, unions, consumer associations and suppliers, etc.) in the reflection of the challenges faced and the role to be played by the UPU, governments and regulators as agents of change and leaders of postal reform processes.

The process of ratifying the Final Acts of the 22nd Congress of the Universal Postal Union (UPU), held in Beijing in 1999, is under way, as they were submitted by ICP-ANACOM to the Ministry of the Economy and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2002.