This challenge was at the forefront of the discussions at the 34th Conference on Postal and Delivery Economics and Policy, jointly organised by the Centre for a Digital Society and the Universal Postal Union (UPU) from 6 to 8 May in Cologne, Germany.
This year’s edition came at a pivotal moment for the sector: the European Commission is preparing a major overhaul of its postal and delivery regulatory framework through the upcoming EU Delivery Act, a reform that appears likely to go far beyond a technical revision of existing rules.
Increasingly, the core debate extends from traditional concerns around universal service and territorial cohesion to questions of competition, digital transformation, and resilience, and ultimately to how Europe wants to govern its wider delivery ecosystem in an era shaped by e-commerce, platforms and automation.
“Postal operators are no longer simply managing decline in letter mail. They are managing one of the largest resource reallocations in modern network industries,” said Professor Timothy B Folta from the University of Connecticut during his keynote speech.
Against this backdrop, sector professionals, regulators and academics gathered for three days to discuss what reforms are needed to promote fair competition in increasingly parcel-oriented markets while preserving the Universal Service Obligation, the principle that ensures citizens and businesses, including those in peripheral or less profitable areas and small and medium-sized enterprises, remain connected.
“E-commerce growth gave postal operators a new business opportunity, but certainly not an easy one,” said Professor Pier Luigi Parcu, Director of the Centre for a Digital Society at the EUI’s Robert Schuman Centre. “Rules designed for the old postal world, such as daily delivery requirements, became harder and more expensive to manage.” Simplifying and clarifying legislation is widely seen as a necessary first step. The latest amendment to the Postal Services Directive dates back to 2008, while rules on cross-border parcel delivery were last updated in 2018.
In her keynote address, Mary Veronica Tovsak Pleterski, Director of Single Market, Enforcement and Barrier Removal at DG GROW in the European Commission, confirmed that the revision of the European postal framework increasingly goes beyond “postal services” and is becoming a broader discussion about the governance of Europe’s highly diverse delivery ecosystem.
To strengthen cohesion and user protection, Tovsak Pleterski highlighted several priorities for the future framework, including modernising the Universal Service Obligation, improving cross-border interoperability, strengthening transparency mechanisms, and promoting fair competition across the Single Market.
“The reform must recognise that European countries have very different postal systems. Some are more digitalised than others. Some still rely more heavily on letters. Governments also interpret the universal service obligation differently, and do not all have the same appetite for changing it,” explained Anna Pisarkiewicz, Scientific Organiser of the Conference. Any future EU framework, she argued, will need to be flexible enough to reflect those differences while remaining adaptable to a market that continues to evolve rapidly.
These priorities from the Commission were echoed on the third day of the conference, where regulators — namely Annegret Groebel (BNetzA), Giacomo Lasorella (AGCOM), David Levitt (Ofcom), and Bernardo Herman (BIPT) — focused on what would be needed to make such ambitions operational in practice and highlighted three key areas.
First, there was broad agreement that the current framework requires modernisation, particularly around the definition and scope of postal activities, the treatment of vertically integrated platforms, and the uneven application of postal rules across Member States.
Second, regulators stressed that the future of the Universal Service Obligation remains central, arguing that financing mechanisms should remain competition-neutral and avoid distorting market dynamics.
Finally, participants underscored the growing importance of data. Stronger and more harmonised coordination to collect market information was described as increasingly necessary for evidence-based regulation.
Running in parallel with the conference, an Innovation Challenge organised by the Universal Postal Union in partnership with the Centre for a Digital Society brought together AI engineers, data scientists, and industry professionals to explore how large datasets, agentic AI, and artificial intelligence could improve operational efficiency and support the future of postal services.
In Cologne, stakeholders from across the sector converged on one point: a common regulatory framework, flexible enough to adapt to different national realities, will be essential so the postal sector can grapple with the emergence of a far more complex delivery ecosystem, one that is multi-network, multi-service, increasingly parcel-oriented, and deeply interconnected with digital platforms, e-commerce, automation and data.