Romania's National Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications (ANCOM) applied a EUR 11,000 fine to Total Post for having breached the right reserved to state owned Romanian Post to deliver mail under 50 grams, at a price below RON 2 per item. This is the second fine applied by ANCOM to the company, after a first in October last year, which was one fifth of the current fine.

Until 2013, when the postal services market in Romania will be open to competition, the Romanian Post has sole rights to carry mail under 50 grams, being the universal service provider in the postal sector throughout Romania.

The fine for breaching the exclusivity can reach RON 60,000 and in the case of serious and repeated breaches, even 2 percent or 5 percent of the company's turnover.

“The amount of the fine applied to Total Post is justified on the one hand by the fact that this company did not modify the contract, which was subject to the sanction enforced last year and, on the other hand, by the fact that the same situation was found in the case of other contracts as well,” said Cristian Popa, the Director of the Monitoring and Control Executive Division within ANCOM. Total Post Services concluded contracts with several companies in view of providing postal services at a price lower than the one reserved for the Romanian Post.

The Romanian Post benefits from reserved rights since, in its capacity of universal service provider, it also has the obligation to cover postal services for the entire national territory in order to enable each inhabitant to have access to postal services, regardless of the locality where they live.

The national service provider has the obligation to provide services throughout Romania, at the same tariffs, including in the hard to reach or low density geographic areas, where the correspondence volume is low and therefore the activity is not profitable. As well, CNPR has the obligation to make available for the users at least one postal box and at least one contact point in each locality on Romanian territory.

In 2011 and this year, ANCOM applied seven fines to companies that had breached the Romanian Post's exclusivity.

editor@romania-insider.com

(photo source: photoxpress.com)