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In June 2012, a bill to amend the Czech Postal Services Act was
finally approved. The amendments follow the latest development at
EU-level regarding the liberalisation of the postal market, and
will come into force in January 2013. The amendments will have the
effect of removing the existing monopoly held by the state
enterprise Česká poata (Czech Post) over deliveries
of postal items that weigh up to 50 g with a price of up to 0.7
EUR, and shall open up the market to competition.
Businesses as well as natural persons will be authorised to
provide postal services provided that they fulfill the duty to
notify the Czech Telecommunication Authority. The notification must
include, inter alia, a list of the postal services to be provided,
the area of activity for the postal services, details of the
proposed postal network and the date of commencement of postal
services. Some additional administrative requirements will also
need to be fulfilled, including the requirement for foreign company
applicants to submit a commercial register extract.
The Czech Telecommunication Authority is likely to reject the
notification only in exceptional cases, such as where the applicant
is a company with a criminal or insolvency record. In the majority
of other cases, the Czech Telecommunication Authority will register
the postal service provider.
Applicants entering the market will not be obliged to provide
all existing postal services, or to provide coverage of their
postal network across the whole of the Czech Republic. To ensure
that the full extent of postal services is provided, the Czech
Telecommunication Authority will also issue a postal license
regarding the so-called universal postal service. This license will
impose a duty on the provider to provide all basic services within
a specified area. Basic services include delivering any post items
that weigh up to 10 kg, providing for money transfers via postal
vouchers, providing deliveries via registered mail and the
provision of various other services. In the next five years, the
state-owned Česká poata shall be the sole holder of
this postal license. From 2018, the postal license shall be awarded
by a tender set out by the Czech Telecommunication Authority.
Smaller businesses may only seek to provide the more profitable
postal services, such as by way of only offering their services to
bigger cities. It would therefore remain the duty of the postal
license holder to offer less profitable services across the whole
of the Czech Republic. As a result, the postal license holder may
find it difficult to generate profit. To compensate this, the
Postal Services Act envisages that the postal license holder may
seek reimbursement of such a financial burden. Based on the
decision of the Czech Telecommunication Authority, all other postal
services providers may be obliged to contribute to the
reimbursement of costs for the postal license holder, in a ratio
set out by the Czech Telecommunication Authority. This may however
be considered as a key disadvantage of the new scheme which may
limit the number of new postal services providers that enter the
market.
This article was written for Law-Now, CMS Cameron
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give professional or legal advice. All Law-Now information relates
to circumstances prevailing at the date of its original publication
and may not have been updated to reflect subsequent
developments.
The original publication date for this article was
09/07/2012.
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