Swiss Post acknowledges the decisions made by the National Council on the new postal legislation. It welcomes the fact that it will gain modern structures and sufficient entrepreneurial scope in order to handle its diverse tasks. This will create important conditions for Swiss Post to hold its own as a competitive service provider and continue to offer a high-quality basic service in the future. Swiss Post hopes that the remaining differences can be ironed out quickly, so that the new legislation can come into force as soon as possible.

Swiss Post acknowledges the decisions made by the National Council on the complete revision of postal legislation. With the approval of the National Council and the agreement of the Council of States to the new Postal Act (PA) and the new Postal Organization Act (POA) already given in December 2009, Swiss Post has come a lot closer to its wish for a modern, forward-looking legal basis for the company and for the postal market. As an important service provider in Switzerland with an obligation to provide a basic service, Swiss Post requires a clear, modern mandate from the legislator, the same competitive conditions as its competitors and a legal framework which allows sufficient entrepreneurial scope.

Swiss Post considers these requirements to be basically met by the two draft bills. Swiss Post particularly welcomes the fact that, as a public limited company under special legislation, it will receive a modern legal form with the necessary entrepreneurial freedom and employment conditions. This will create the conditions Swiss Post needs to be able to hold its own in the future. Swiss Post is also pleased that, by structuring its financial institution as a legally independent public limited company and placing it under the control of the financial market supervisory authority FINMA, PostFinance’s position as a player in the retail finance market will be strengthened.

Overall, the two laws form a solid basis to ensure the basic service for postal services and payments, and so that Swiss Post, as a successful company, is able to contribute to its financing.

A monopoly is not decisive

Swiss Post hopes that Parliament will iron out the remaining differences quickly, so that the new postal legislation can come into force as soon as possible. For Swiss Post, it is not so important whether the residual monopoly on addressed domestic letters up to 50 g is lifted. Swiss Post already generates around 80 percent of its sales in competitive business and the remaining 20 percent must compete with electronic methods. What’s more important is for the company to have entrepreneurial freedom enabling it to trade successfully as a service provider and continually adapt its services to social developments, changing customer requirements and technological change.