Members of the European Parliament’s Committee on Transport and Tourism have decided that full liberalization of postal services will not take place until 2011, including in Poland. This gives Poczta Polska more time to prepare for competition with commercial companies in the handling of shipments up to 50 grams. Additionally, MEPs announced that new member states and island nations will be able to benefit from an additional two-year transition period.
Poland, France, Belgium, and Italy sought to push the deadline for service liberalization as far into the future as possible, explaining their actions by the resistance of trade unions, which expect mass layoffs of postal workers. A different approach was taken by rapidly developing countries such as Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, which have already fully opened their postal service markets to competing firms.