Strengthening Postal Development in Europe | An Interview with PostEurop’s Secretary General

Duration: 3:46 372 transcript words EN summary

Video summary

The speaker represents PostEurop, a regional union acting on behalf of designated public postal operators across Europe, emphasizing the need for the Universal Postal Union (UPU) strategy to balance global solutions with specific regional priorities. Through a collaborative and iterative process involving the UPU's Development Cooperation Division, PostEurop headquarters, and its member organizations, a comprehensive regional development plan for the 2026–2029 period has been established. This approach successfully merges the top-down perspective of the international union with a bottom-up dimension that highlights the unique needs and priorities of European postal operators, ensuring that the strategy remains both globally relevant and locally adaptable. Central to this initiative is the drive to enhance the business relevance of the Universal Postal Network by leveraging Europe's status as operating the world's largest physical network for collection, transportation, sorting, and delivery. The implementation of the new development cycle aims to significantly improve logistics efficiency while simultaneously addressing critical modern challenges such as environmental sustainability, social inclusion, and service diversification. Furthermore, the strategy places a strong emphasis on fostering innovation through digitalization and the integration of artificial intelligence, ensuring that the postal sector remains competitive and capable of meeting evolving consumer demands in an increasingly complex global marketplace. To translate these strategic goals into tangible results, the speaker outlines a cooperative framework that utilizes various practical tools including training workshops, capacity-building sessions, and study tours. A key component of this execution strategy involves maximizing the resources allocated by the UPU while effectively combining them with the internal resources of PostEurop member organizations. This synergy is supported by active collaboration with UPU bodies and regional offices located in Ankara and Tbilisi, creating a robust support system designed to empower members and ensure that the development plan is implemented effectively across the continent. Ultimately, the speaker expresses strong confidence that this excellent cooperation will yield significant benefits for PostEurop's members, directly contributing to the further development of the UPU network's relevance worldwide. By continuing to work along these broad lines in a spirit of cooperation, the union aims to deliver concrete outcomes that strengthen the postal sector's role as a vital infrastructure for economic growth and social cohesion. The collective effort focuses on ensuring that the designated operators not only survive but thrive by adapting to new technologies and maintaining their commitment to universal service obligations in a rapidly changing environment.

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Uh we are uh representing as a regional uh union the European uh public postal operators, so the designated operators from Europe. And from our perspective, uh it is important uh that the UPU strategy uh reflects two things. On the one hand, it offers global solutions for all the designated operators around the world, but at the same time, uh it also reflects the regional uh priorities. And through an iterative process, we have built actually together uh with the UPU IB, it's uh DC Dev, the Post Europe members with the Post Europe headquarters, the regional development plan uh for 2026-2029. Throughout uh this process, we could highlight all the priorities which are important for the European postal uh operators, the designated operators from our continents, and I feel that uh we could really combine in the best way the top-down perspective of the UPU with our uh bottom-up dimension. So, for us, the business relevance is the most important question. So, what we expect uh from the implementation of the UPU strategy in general and particularly from the implementation of the new cycle of the regional development plan is that it contributes to the further increase of the business relevance of the Universal Postal Network, for For contributing to the uh efficiency increase of the logistics network including delivery, the green dimensions, the inclusive dimensions, the diversification of the services and products. Also to contribute to the innovation, digitalization, the inclusion of the AI. We mustn't forget that we operate the largest physical collection, transportation, sorting and delivery network in the world. I think we can continue the contribution with the UPU bodies, the UPU's DCDEV, the regional offices set up in Ankara and Tbilisi. And I think there are various tools for putting everything into practice such as organizing training and capacity building workshops, study tours, but the main aspect is that we continue along the big lines in the most cooperative way using the resources allocated within the UPU context combining it with the post Europe members resources and I'm confident that through this excellent cooperation we can bring tangible results to our members who are really interesting in developing the relevance of the UPU network further.