The European Commitee for Postal Regulation (CERP) held a plenary meeting last 9-10 October in Athens. The evening before that gathering saw the first meeting of the Commission for Good Regulatory Practices, also in Athens.
The plenary session, besides the presentation of reports on work undertaken by the various working groups (WGs) and project teams (PTs), was marked by the reorganisation of CERP by approval of its new structure, with two WGs reporting to the plenary session, to which nine PTs also report, under equal circumstances - some of these are new, while others continue ongoing work.
The session also included speeches by guest speakers Jörg Reinbothe of the European Commission, who described the situation of the current phase of postal liberalisation in Europe, and Won-Ja Lee, project director of the Universal Postal Union (UPU), who summarised the Union's 24th Congress, held in Geneva from 23 July to 12 August 2008. One of the CERP Steering Committee members also discussed the UPU Congress from the standpoint of common interest for the CERP members, i.e., topics concerning regulation.
Information was released on the most recent developments in reorganising CEPT and the forum on ''Provision of International Postal Services in a Liberalised European Market'', which presented the models advocated by PostEurop, the UPU, European Express Association and DX. This discussion stressed the relevance of the subject ''Extraterritorial Exchange Mail''.
At the meeting of the Good Regulatory Practices Commission, the Polish operator and the Greek, Lithuanian and French regulators presented the structures and some statistical data about their postal markets, regulation models, costing systems and economic implications of universal postal service. Also, Copenhagen Economics gave a presentation on methods of calculating the costs of universal service obligations and on the Danish example.
The next CERP plenary meeting has been scheduled for 6-8 May 2009 in Luxembourg.
