About: universal service

‘Safeguarding universal service requires sustainable financing solution’

As rules on liberalising Europe's postal markets look set to be adopted in the New Year, Pál Szabó, CEO of Hungary's Magyar Posta, points to a number of "bad experiences" in countries that have already opened up their postal markets to competition and stresses the need for a "sustainable financing solution" to allow incumbent operators to continue providing citizens with quality services.

‘No agreement possible on liberalising postal markets by 2009’

With Portugal currently at the EU's helm, the country's Public Works, Transport and Communications Minister Mário Lino talks exclusively to EURACTIV about achieving a compromise between all 27 member states on the sensitive issue of opening up national postal markets to competition, and describes the main elements of a deal that he believes will garner the backing of his 26 European counterparts.