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RON 100,000 Fine and Temporary Suspension of the Right to Provide Postal Services for Total Post
18.07.2012
ANCOM applied a RON 100,000 fine to S.C. TOTAL POST SERVICES S.R.L., which provided postal services consisting of correspondence items weighing up to 50 g, charging less than RON 2/item. The company thus breached the exclusive right reserved to the universal service provider in the postal sector.
This is the third fine enforced on this provider for the breach of the same legal provisions, after the RON 10,000 fine applied in October 2011 and, respectively, the RON 50,000 fine enforced this year in May.
Besides the contravention sanctions, ANCOM decided to suspend for 3 months the right of Total Post to provide all the categories of postal services which it was authorised to provide. If, after the expiry of the suspension period, the provider does not remove the causes which triggered this measure, ANCOM may decide to withdraw its right to provide postal services.
“Given that we have discovered lately several cases of breach of the rights reserved to Romanian Post, we draw again the attention on the legal provisions: the only company that can offer a price below RON 2 per item for the correspondence items weighing between 0 and 50 g is Romanian Post. The other providers of postal services that disregard these weighing and tariff limits are committing a contravention which will be sanctioned accordingly.The non-observance of the legal provisions in the postal field may result in the suspension of the right to provide postal services, as in this instance, or even in the definitive withdrawal of this right”, the Director of the Monitoring and Control Executive Division within ANCOM,Mr. Cristin Popa, said.
The Romanian Post National Company S.A. (CNPR) benefits from reserved rights since, in its capacity of universal service provider, it has the obligation to cover with postal services the entire national territory in order to enable each inhabitant to have access to postal services, regardless of the locality where she/he lives. Hence, the universal service provider has the obligation to provide services throughout Romania, at the same tariffs, including in the hard accessible 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 the Romanian territory.
