On 28.02.2012 the Law on “Regulation of the operation of the postal market, electronic communications issues and other provisions” was enacted. The above Law transposes the Directive 2008/6/EC into the national law in order to establish the suitable procedures for the complete liberalization of the postal market on 01.01.2013 and to guarantee the provision of high level universal services throughout the Greek territory.
The key provision of the new Law is the withdrawal of the exclusive rights of the Universal Service Provider from 01.01.2013 regarding the collection, sorting, transport and delivery of items of domestic mail, of cross-border mail and of direct mail, with a limit weight of 50 grams. By such withdrawal all the postal services are liberalized and the Universal Service Provider becomes almost equal with the other providers of postal services in the postal market, however, continuing to hold the first place among equals.
Furthermore, the procedure for granting general and special authorizations is simplified. More specifically, the general authorization requires only the registration of the interested enterprise with registry of the Hellenic Telecommunications and Post Commission (Greek initials EETT) without any further official approvals. The conditions and procedure for the granting, renewal, modification, transfer and generally all matters relating to special authorizations will be regulated by a regulation to be issued by EETT.
The ELTA S.A. (Hellenic Post) remains the Universal Service Provider until 31.12.2028 and the already existing postal service providers will continue to provide services under the new regime. Following the enforcement of the new law upon its publication in the Government’s Gazette provisions of Law 2668/1998 and 3185/2003 will be automatically repealed. However, the regulations issued under the authorization of the above laws and regulate inter alia the authorizations for the provisions of postal services shall remain in full force until their explicit abolition by the regulations to be issued under the provisions of the new law.
Edited by Natassa Kollia