Although there has been a huge amount of coverage on the Post Office privatisation announcement from Vince Cable, there has been almost complete silent on the real reason for the sell-off.
The nearest we get is John Harris in the low-circulation Guardian who, while complaining that the sell-off plan is "daylight robbery", manages one sentence, well down his piece, noting that: "The central role in all this played by the EU directives has incurred the wrath of some Conservatives, and plenty of Ukip activists".
Indeed the role of the EU has been "central" and you can see not so much the fingerprints as the bootprints on the Commission website here. The privatisation is the government's response to EU's plan to create a "single market for postal services", first set in train with the 118-page Green Paper (COM/91/476) published on 11 June 1992.
The problem for EU-watchers is that there is no single Commission or other document – much less a directive - that overtly commands, "thou shalt privatise". But, as we learn from studying the work of the financial consultancy, PwC, "liberalisation" is being used as the Trojan horse for the privatisation process.
The plan was agreed in principle by the member states in 1997 – a poison chalice handed down from Major to Blair - and officially adopted through the third postal directive, requiring most member states to open their postal market to competition at the latest end of 2010.
The fact that the process is slightly delayed is neither here nor there – Mr Cable's announcement this week is in direct response to this directive. PwC gives the game away with this passage:
Quote:
This liberalisation will have a dramatic impact on the incumbent postal operators. The universal service provision won't be funded anymore by the profit making reserved area. The postal operators will have to increase their efficiency and quality in order to keep enough market share to maintain economics of scale. Service offering and prices shall have to evolve to better reflect customer needs. Regulation will have to move from price control avoiding cross-subsidisation to searching a balance between allowing market entry and maintaining universal service provision, possibly with public or sector funding.
Some member states started that evolution years ago, postal markets are open in a few cases, others still have to prepare themselves. After the transition period, it even might be expected that the sector will be totally deregulated, moving to normal competition law. This evolution often implies that the privatisation of the postal operator, whether partial or total, will give the commercial freedom requested to face competition, and allow cross-border alliances and consolidation, as was the case in other network industries.
From there, we see that, while there is no direct requirement for member states to privatise their services, this is a necessary consequence of the third directive.
If there is a "smoking gun", it is in a 210-page report produced by Price Waterhouse Coopers for the Commission in 2006, entitled: "The Impact on Universal Service of the Full Market Accomplishment of the Postal Internal Market in 2009".
This provision of the European Directive, it said, "constitutes in fact the 'last mile' of the long journey the European Union is undertaking in creating a liberalised internal market for postal services".
The overall objective of the EU is, of course, to detach national monopolies from the nation states – key symbols of national identity and control, thence in the fullness of time to create a European postal service.
If we eventually see blue-painted post boxes, however, our venal media will still not understand what has been going on. Besotted with Margaret Thatcher's privatisation programme, it will mistake the colour as Conservative party blue, daubed in honour of the former leader.
And lest we forget, the postal services directive has been rejected by Norway. Presumably, the law came down on the wrong type of fax, as the Norwegian government in 2004 was very clear that the directive meant the end of state control.
Thus, while so many can see it - which is hardly difficult as the same process is happening throughout Europe - our media is blind. The invisible EU-lephant is safe from its incurious gaze.
