 We'll give everyone one minute to take their places, but we will kick off in just a second. Great. Well, why don't we get underway? It's a great pleasure for me to welcome you to the fall of 2022 conference on postal regulation, which is devoted, of course, to the key topic before us as we prepare for next year's extraordinary Congress, that of opening the UPU to the wider postal sector. We have a full day ahead of us. You're aware that our program is eight and a half hours, so we're gonna have a healthy opportunity to exchange views. And I'll talk a little bit more about the structure of the day in a few minutes, but I wanted first to invite the Director General, Mr. Masahiko Matoki, to address us and provide his introductory remarks and thoughts on our discussion and the work ahead of us leading up to that important event next year. Mr. Director General. Thank you very much, Mr. Yatsun. Good morning, everyone. So the thing is, the area is representing from the wider postal sectors. Dear colleagues, I'm very happy to see so many people gathering in the same room. So I believe no more fears for the pandemic, I believe. So it is my great pleasure to welcome you all to the UPU Conference on Postal Regulation. This has been a unique and active forum for UPU member countries to share and exchange their valuable experiences and views on postal policy and regulation. In this second session of the conference during the Abijan cycle, we will discuss the opening up of the UPU to wider postal sector players. As a sector-based UN special agency, the UPU is profoundly affected by the rapid and extensive transformation of the postal sector mainly resulting from the rise of e-commerce and digitalization. More recently, designated postal operations have increased collaboration with wider postal sector players such as customs authorities, service providers for e-commerce, fulfillment and security, freight carriers and express carrier and logistic companies. These developments have not only result in the expansion and the increased complexity of postal service and supply chain, but also they have made clear the need to further develop and modernize postal policies and regulations. The Abijan Congress recognizes that increased access of wider postal sector players to UPU product services will help advance the mission of the union. Congress has adopted Resolution C-11 2021 of further reform and opening of the union to wider postal sector players. The related CA task force has been working to prepare relevant proposals for further consideration by the Extraordinary Congress in 2023. CA Committee 2 has set up an expert team to contribute to the task forces work by conducting a technical review of UPU products and services that could potentially be opened up to wider postal sector players. So this conference comes at an important juncture in the UPU's work on this topic. I invite top-level decision makers from governments, regulatory authorities and designated operators, as well as wider postal sector players to actively participate in the discussion. I would like to sincerely thank the panelists for their participation in this conference today and also our moderators, Mr. Samuel Dewey and Mr. Stuart Smith, co-chairs of the task force and Ms. Nelmin Hassan and Dr. Rajiv Ben Gopal, co-chairs of CA Committee 2, who will read today's fruitful discussions. I would also like to recognize the co-chairs of the CA Committee 2 expert team on the technical assessment of UPU products and services. Mr. Peter Correll and Mr. Luis Gonzalez for their expertise and guidance in this difficult and technical work. With these remarks, I wish you an excellent conferences. I will now hand the floor over to Mr. Dewey and Mr. Smith. Thank you very much. Thank you, Director General, for those words of welcome. And with that, we'll get started. As the Director General indicated, I have the honor to co-chair this with my friend and colleague from Algeria, Samir Zouawi, who is with us online from Algiers. As I said, we have a long day today and we've divided, as you see from the panel, our work into two segments. We're gonna talk first about how wider postal sector players can be better engaged in the decision-making process at the UPU, how the institution can rethink its structure to allow that. And then that's the panel that Samir and I will chair. And then we're gonna turn our attention to access to products and services, as the Director General indicated. And thankfully, Committee 2 has stepped forward to share the load with us and Raj and Nermeen will chair that session. Now this morning, we have, as you see, a Davos-style panel. And we have four experts who represent the various stakeholder groups in the UPU and who are gonna share their thoughts on this institutional question that is before us. Then we're going to open the floor for questions and answers and for your input, your questions to the panelists and to us. I see a large audience. I think the IB has indicated to me that we are already over 100 people online. So we do have very good attendance today. And I did wanna say one more thing about the style of the discussion today. A couple of you have remarked on my attire. I'm a little less formal than I usually am when I'm in the hall here. And we really view this as a conversation on Femme. We're talking among ourselves about issues that are fundamental to the future of our union because we've talked about trends in the postal market that are occurring around us. And we wanna make sure that we are adapting ourselves in the best way to address them and to deal with them. So again, in a sense, if you're all familiar, I'm sure with the term Chatham House Rules, we're just brainstorming among ourselves. As the Director General said, we encourage everyone to speak up. We're not heads of delegation here. We're not necessarily speaking for our country or our company. We're just exchanging ideas and trying to enrich the discussion and get it into a really detailed level. Because, and I will be frank, though a key work is ahead of us. We are at the end of October, 2022. We will have the Congress next October. And I believe the dates that are proposed are October 2nd to 6th. And we have until S3 really to work intensively to get those proposals ready to be submitted to the Congress. So that's the agenda ahead of us and my brief introductory remarks. And I'd now like to turn the floor over to my dear colleague, Samir, in Algiers, trusting that technology will not fail us here. And he's going to set the scene a little bit for our first panel on institutional reform before we hand the floor over to our panelists and invite them to make their introductory presentations. So Samir. Thank you, Steve, for giving me the floor. And first of all, good morning, delegates. Director General, distinguished participants, I would like to begin by thanking the Director General of the UPU for his support and his contribution to our work. By way of an introduction, I would like to state that one of the important principles that governed the work of the task force is the principle of inclusivity. That's very important for us. And the fact that we're having this discussion here today just bears witness to how important inclusivity is to all of us. We've tried to involve as many stakeholders as possible and as broad a swathe of our sector players as possible. I wish to thank everyone in advance for their contributions and for their comments. Let me just remind you of how we got here. A number of Congress resolutions were adopted in Abidjan, C11 and C12 are the ones that are of concern to us. And they instructed the UPU to put in place a group that would develop proposals aimed at further reform and opening of the union to wider postal sector players. This then was a task force that was required to examine proposals that would then be put to the 2023 Extraordinary Congress. The CA, in accordance with that, set up a task force to deliver on this mandate, the mandate given to us by Congress. We put in place a task force and it is co-chaired by the United States of America and Algeria. This task force got down to work and in seeking to give effect to the mandate from the Congress, it decided that it would be appropriate to look at those resolutions and then convert them into specific deliverables. And then those deliverables were grouped into three work streams. Firstly, the institutional framework. Secondly, the second work stream, products and services. And thirdly, reform as a continuum. So that was the basis on which the work was done. And as my co-chair Stuart has said, we have always been focused in all of this work on these three areas. Institutional framework reform then is work stream one, as you can see on the screen. And we recognize the importance of the involvement of wider postal sector players in our activities, in the UPUs activities, including decision making. And that being so, the task force is required to make proposals on the appropriate future institutional framework for the union in order to guarantee the future participation of these wider postal sector players. And there are a number of scenarios that might bring that about. Without further ado, I'll give the floor back to Stuart, you have the floor. Could the interpreters request that all those participating online mute themselves if they are not actually speaking? I just wanted to add one word, one comment to that. And you will hear more details about this in the afternoon, but in our work and the task force, one of the important things we've done over the last few months is solicit input from all of you, from all of you stakeholders. And we've drawn some conclusions from that work and we will go, as I say, into more detail this afternoon. But before we turn the floor over to our panelists, I thought I should at least mention the broad direction in which the task force is proposing that the UPU go on institutional reform so that our panelists can comment and so that you can ask questions about it. And Samir has mentioned the resolutions that guide our work from Abhijan. Those were part of a consensus decision that we reached on this opening issue to lay the base for our work in this Abhijan cycle. Another element of that consensus decision was some changes, were some changes that we introduced to the consultative committee, which is the body that has existed since 2004, not to steal your thunder here, Walter, to represent wider sector players. Now that committee has not been an unmitigated success and water is gonna talk to us a little bit about the reasons for that. So I think there is a general consensus that emerged from our survey that the status quo is not sufficient, that we need to look at further steps. But there was also a feeling that some of the more ambitious steps, this is revealed from our survey, as those of you who attended our meeting or I'm sure have read our report have seen, that some of the ambitious proposals that we've examined like a business council were perhaps premature. So that is the recommendation that the task force will make to the council of administration in the plenary tomorrow. And I wanted to mention it, we'll give more details in the afternoon. But I did then wanna introduce our panelists and give the floor first. Well, first let me say that as I said, they represent the four stakeholder groups in the UPU, wider sector players, operators, and the Postal Operations Council, governments and regulators. But first we have our esteemed colleague, Walter Trezek, who has chaired the consultative committee through the Istanbul Cycle and beyond. And so he's seen its work over the last four years and he's gonna talk about how that, how it worked in that cycle, some of the ideas they had in the last cycle, what we did in Abhijan and perhaps what more we can do. Now you all know Walter well, so I don't really need to introduce him at length in addition to chairing the committee, he's co-chair of E-Commerce Europe. And I'll leave it at that. I could say more, but I think we wanna hear from him. So Walter please, the floor is yours. Thank you, Stuart, Director-General, Deputy Director-General, ladies and gentlemen, in the room, online, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. It is a pleasure to be here. Again, I would call that a milestone for the consultative committee. Thank you very much for giving the consultative committee the floor. I would like to thank you to my presentation. Next slide please. Yeah, so what happened in the last cycle? When the cycle started, the consultative committee convened and actually looked into the status of the consultative committee. Then the consultative committee was a consensus-based committee. Consensus-based in the sense that there was a clear representation from the POC, clear representation from the CA, the governments, the regulators, but also non-governmental organizations, multinational non-governmental organizations. Many of those organizations are still members. To give you an example, UniGlobal, for instance, the World Free Zone Organization, Ecommerce Europe, GS1, associations, organizations, worldwide organizations. When we came together, we said, well, the whole setup of the consultative committee is based on consensus. But it only gives the members the possibility to intervene and participate on a rather high level, not direct participation. And parallel to that, transformation, digitalization, the global postal environments for all stakeholders, all the opportunities and so on changed dramatically. The main purpose of the CC is to represent the interests and views of the wider sector players who are interested in supporting the UPU's mission and objectives. That's true for the last cycle and it is true very much so for this cycle as well. However, the whole vehicle being consensus-based and only non-governmental associations as a member was too little. Direct participation of the wider sector players, businesses, private entities, was not possible at all. And participation in standing groups of high interest were restricted or are restricted. Next slide please. So opening up of the UPU to the wider sector players, drawing on the history, there was a clear step at Abhijan Congress where we made our homework in the consultative committee and found out that the committee itself was not fully institutionalized. There was little recognition of the potential contribution of a consultative committee to contribute to the work of the UPU bodies. And also very important, the financing mechanism was unsustainable. So the cost of the consultative committee on a yearly basis was in about 200,000 Swiss francs. The membership fees were around 40,000. Well, that's not sustainable at all. So we were drawing from the resources, couldn't contribute enough, and the added value for our members, in particular those who didn't come from POC or CA was not really there. So we worked quite hard and came forward with a transformation proposal. And that transformation proposal was finally introduced also in the consensus proposal for opening up. The consultative committee was a major part of that and we were very happy to notice that the consultative committee was actually used for the purpose of inviting wider sector players to the UPU. So a clear value proposition for the CC members was to change, to invite the private sector, non-governmental members, we called them non-state actors to open the membership for those actors. That was adopted. The interaction with UPU bodies and input into the UPU's work was very interaction of the consultative committee and the union bodies has been considered, but has not been adopted at full. Participation in the decision-making process, still recognizing of course the inter-governmental structure of the union is highly important for those wider sector players. And that is still high on our agenda, formalizing that kind of interaction of the CC with standing working groups and task forces should actually be further explored. But of course, the new members have to play a certain very active role there proving their value to the UPU. It was absolutely clear and we tried to monitor that and implement that into our setup internally. Next slide, please. So how does the setup currently look like? Well, there is the consultative committee. It represents the interests of the wider sector and provides a framework for effective dialogue. Official promotion of the wider sector will be reported through the consultative committee, the CA and POC via reporters. So we have now an internal structure since two or three weeks. We have our reporters. We have the thematic chapters. We have our internal working sphere and I'm very glad that this is only possible because we had such an influx of new members to the consultative committee over the last three months and you all feel that even the atmosphere in this house is changing a little bit. Not only because tonight we are also hosting a reception but it is very important that these new members are here and I welcome them. Some of them are here in the room. Others are online. So the plea here is that this internal structure now will start working. Next slide please. So this consultative committee is still the only place to incorporate technologies, ideas, knowledge from wider sector players into the UPU's policies and regulations. So it's clearly streamlined. It is clearly a facilitation of those ideas. It should be the best place to access all postal players, operators, ministries, regulators in particular when those new members have what we call the CC gold membership status which allows them to have face to face meetings facilitated by the CC secretary. The CC facilitates access and helps those new members to better understand what the products and services possibly already open to them are and a possible participation in development and revision of certain specifications and regulations. It's knowledge sharing that should come from those wider sector players. Most of them serving the sector anyway already but now they have the possibility to share knowledge, to share expertise and bring it to the table where the future of the sector should be decided in the POC standing groups. Next slide, please. So when we talk about an enhanced consultative committee so what could that be? Well, we have now a certain structure. There are certain members coming in. Obviously they feel that there is a value proposition. They are now getting engaged. They better understand how the UPU works. They are channeled into the different work streams. They have their internal structure to participate and actually form what we call opinions of the certain chapters, complementing the structure of the POC and CA. When these opinions are developed based on documents coming from the standing groups, there is qualified input which will be tabled to the standing groups to be recognized hopefully so that interaction can happen in a formalized way. I know that that interaction will only happen if that kind of opinion is of value to the standing groups. So I'm encouraging our members to provide that value and I know that this value is available from our wider sector players. Only then the wider sector players and the consultative committee will be able to be incorporated in the future next steps, developments, revisions of standards and all the ongoing topics within the UPU. If you call that then decision-making transformation or qualified participation and knowledge sharing, for me that's semantic. Membership transformation. Yes, I'm very happy to report that up to the last day of September we had 13 new members, wider sector players members joining the consultative committee. And of today I can report that we doubled our membership since the 1st of July. On the 1st of July we had 15 members because we lost our dear members coming from the POC and CA. They now have observer status and feel assured. The more wider sector players coming into the consultative committee, I will need the observers coming from the POC again because I need their expertise on how to handle possibly larger market dominant organizations which are already at the doorstep. So membership transformation is happening fast. So today we have doubled, we have more than 30 members and there are more members in the pipeline. So another three applications are on the table of the DG as I speak. That's very good news. And we had a successful plea to new members supported by the DDG in Frankfurt during the post expo. That was very successful and thank you very much indeed Marion for that. So the internal organization is now fit for purpose. Again, it was very good to have that exercise, to have rapporteurs taking responsibility to shape those work streams parallel to the POC and CA. None of those rapporteurs is a representative of a market dominant company. That's very important because they need to be neutral and they have to shape the opinion of the CC in a neutral way. The internal organization is now in force. We will have workspaces. We have the resources now also coming from the UPU giving us the opportunity to start working on documents and position papers to qualify, to be accepted by standing bodies, expert teams, task forces and recognized as somebody who is giving value to the UPU. Give here a very clear statement. The UPU should actually see the wider sector players as contributing sectors. So it's not the question why the sector players are asking from the UPU. No, it's actually the other way around. What are the wider sector players are bringing to the UPU and they are very good examples already. They are top technology companies who are providing technology already to designated operators to overcome challenges in the fields of addressing but most prominently currently in the fields of cross-border customs, cross-border VAT, cross-border input control system applications. Highly important with full connectivity also to customs authorities. Interesting, both of course in the non-designated area but also in the fully designated area. They are here and they already placed their technologies into the hands of the PTC to be qualified to be fully aligned to the UPU. So the UPU is playing already a gatekeeper role, actually looking into those technologies and qualifying them as compliant. And we will work on certification, we will work on auditing so that these companies are fully transparent and in line with our regulations and controlled. This is a new membership class, by the way, in the future to come. All about internal organization. Next slide please. These are our famous thematic chapters. Currently we still have six. There's possibly a seventh coming because we recognize that academia is also interested in the UPU and would like to participate. So be prepared. Possibly by S3 we will propose to the CA another chapter for academia and knowledge sharing because we have applicants currently lining up. They would like to participate and share their knowledge but they also need to better understand the UPU. It's a give and take. So these are the thematic chapters. There you see how we are complimenting it. Each is already led by a chapter rapporteur. They will start through a process of knowledge sharing and education so that they know how to behave, how to act, how to shape those opinions and then reach out to the standing groups for qualified input and interaction. This is very good news for me because I have to give something now to our members and keep them occupied over Christmas and New Year to give them the feeling that they're actually active and working because the next invoicing cycle starts in January. Involvement is very important. Purpose and task within the consultative committee is obviously a clear objective. Next slide please. The reporting structure therefore is at the core of the whole process in the consultative committee and there we still have challenges. So there were certain proposals coming to Congress which we took out again and they were not incorporated into the consensus proposal which would have changed that interaction in a more dynamic and more implemented interaction within the rules of the union. So what do I mean? Currently it is at the sole discretion of the cheer people of the standing groups and expert teams and task forces to allow access. The proposal on the table at last Congress coming from the CCWAS, we should take that around. It is general access and only in certain circumstances where there is clear cause to close certain standing bodies, those bodies would close to wider sector players because there are certain trade secrets discussed, certain open data discussed, certain terminal dues issues, what have you. We believe that our proposal is still valid and we will look into that and that would be one of those elements of an enhanced consultative committee but we understand first we need to qualify for that. Broad access? No, I understand that. Qualified access and proving ourselves to actually bring value to the union, that's a different matter and it'll be up to us to prove that in a very short time span. We only have time just slightly beyond this three for that. Next slide please. There we are, thematic chapters. Here you see the members who are now the repertors. I'm very pleased that that was possible. It was only possible because those members quickly joined after the CC opened on the 1st of July and to give you a feeling, we now are in the position still to welcome a new member each week. This is very good news. It basically means that there is a clear value proposition of the UPU, most of those members are gold members. They even prepare to pay 20,000 Swiss francs for that and it's my job to educate them a little bit right now but this will be institutionalized as well. We also have now a new vice chair. He is present in the room, Santosh. I'm very happy because we also need a kind of safety net because previously that was only on my shoulders and I tell you my wife complained about that. I spent more time with the CC secretary than with my family currently but the success proves it today and I really enjoy that. So this is our structure. I'm very happy that this is in place. I'm very grateful to those companies who took that responsibility. They will have a lot to work leading up to Christmas and New Year and it is my purpose then to matchmake those thematic chapters with the standing groups and working groups. Next slide please. The structure, rolls, silver and gold. You see it tonight. Only gold members are allowed to pay for your drinks. So there will be three or four new members currently hosting the event tonight and of course they will use that also to represent themselves to you. It gives us the opportunity to host CC events in this building. That's a right for gold members. Another right for gold members is matchmaking. Reaching out to those governments and designated operators they would like to talk to and it is up to you to talk to them of course and also for you to choose in which format you would like to talk to them and of course you can refuse that. No problem there at all. Next slide please. And that brings me to the end of the presentation. You might have seen that we are quite active in marketing the consultative committee on all those social media channels and it's also quite interesting. Please, please watch us. There are new, quite exciting announcements coming soon about new members from all over the world and all continents. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you Walter for that very illuminating and interesting presentation and quite detailed presentation. And I think appropriately detailed because as I said, what we are going to recommend to the plenary of the Council of Administration tomorrow is really focused on the consultative committee. So it's really important to understand how it has evolved over the years since it was created in 2004. What has happened since Abhijan and as Walter said, it has been a great success in expanding its membership. That's an early success coming from our decisions in Abhijan and a very encouraging sign for the future. Though we want, as I said, we're looking at how we can further enhance it and ensure that that success is sustainable. But Walter has highlighted a number of issues that wider sector players would like to see as part of that enhancement. And obviously we have other stakeholders in the UPU who will have their own views about those requests and perhaps concerns, perhaps not. I don't want to prejudge their presentations. But we have three additional panelists to comment on this and I'd like to turn the floor over now to Samir who will introduce our next speaker. Samir. Thank you, Steve Arndt. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Do you hear me, Steve Arndt? Okay, thank you. So I too would like to thank the chair of the consultative committee. I think we heard an excellent presentation and I now wish to welcome our second panelist that is Mr. Jean-Paul Forseville, the chair of the UPU Postal Operations Council. And before he was chair of the POC, Mr. Forseville worked in many different positions within the UPU. He was the chair of the post-Europe board, for instance. He is also very much involved in the work of La Poste and I'm sure you all know him very well. I give him the floor. Thank you very much, Samir says, Mr. Forseville. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I am really delighted to be addressing you here today. Just a few days ago, Siva was talking to me and he said to me, you know, we would really like you to participate in the panel, the panel that is being organized on regulation. And I said to Siva, what do you expect me to say? And he said, well, I just expect you to be yourself. I said, are you absolutely sure about that? He said, yes. He said, are you absolutely 100% sure? He still said, yes. So here I am and I'm going to try to be myself. Now, I know that some of you attended the POC plenary last week. So you may have heard this before and I apologize for that in advance, but I would just like to begin by making a few comments. I don't, I'm sorry. There is a speaker online who is not muted. Please mute yourself. Please mute yourself online. I was saying that I don't like the word or the words opening up because the opposite of opening up is closing down and you have the impression if you talk about opening up that we were closed before we opened up. And I have never felt that the UPU was a body that had battened down the hatches that was closed down. We've always had observers participating in our work. And let's just think about this a little. The observers that we've always had have always been there to observe. Generally speaking, in the past, these observers didn't ask for the floor, didn't contribute to our debates, didn't make comments at any rate in this room. That was the case. But it may well have been the case that they gleaned some information in this room. And with that information, they went to other bodies and then where armed with that information, so to speak. And it may be that they were then able to say that what was happening in this room wasn't what should have happened. I hope you get my point. At any rate, this was the kind of attitude in the past that we saw. And this led to a certain level of frustration. I think that's something that we have to bear in mind and we have to be honest about that. Sometimes people would say to us, why don't you invite us to attend or to participate in your working groups? And we would say in response to that kind of question because we want to be able to work among ourselves, sharing ideas openly and frankly without ending up with a result that might be counterproductive for our work. I'm talking about the past here. All this is in the past tense, let me emphasize. But that was the past and you can't forget the past. When you're in an organization like UPU that's almost 150 years old, you've got a lot of past whether you like it or not. We have a history. We have a culture that is transmitted from generation to generation. You can't close your eyes to that. And you can't compel an organization to change if it has not understood why it has to change. And people say, look, we've been telling you for ages that we have to make progress, that you have to do this, that you have to do this, that or the other whatever you have to open up. Okay, okay. But why? Why are we where we are? Why have things not gone forward faster than some might have wanted? Well, people vote with their feet to be quite honest. In other words, people hate to be told that they're going to be made happy despite what they want, that despite themselves, they're going to be given what's good for them, whether they recognize that it's good for them or not. You can't do that. People don't accept that. We're at a moment where we have to take people with us. We're on the brink of opening a new chapter in the history of UPU, but let's do that in a way that takes everyone with us and that crystallizes the goodwill that we all do fundamentally have for this organization. So let me now come to 2022. It seems to me that where we are now, and I'm now in the present tense, is going in the right direction and is going forward in an atmosphere where we respect one another and we listen to one another. And that's very important. Shiva, you're still happy? You're still happy with me being myself? You don't regret what you said, okay. Well, in that case, I will now come to the POC. I believe, and I hope you won't hold this against me, I believe that the POC is a marvelous forum for dialogue, for exchanging views. In fact, if I hadn't believed that, I wouldn't have thought to be its chair. Why was the POC established in the first place? Again, we've heard a few slightly bizarre theories about that in the past, but let's remember why it really was established. It was established because a number of operators in an evolving postal market in the 1960s, a market that was changing very rapidly at that time, a number of postal operators in that environment said, we're going to create a technical body where we can share know-how and prepare for the postal sector of the future. That's what they said back in the 1960s. And they started with a fundamental assumption. Their assumption was that representativity within the POC would not be the same as within the CA, because the POC and the way that participants were represented there was supposed to be more technical and therefore it was supposed to represent postal volumes rather than countries and perhaps their geographical or demographic situation. It was supposed to be based on technical postal considerations. That's the way that representation there was to be determined. So you ended up with some countries that appear to be overrepresented and indeed were overrepresented within the POC, but they, by virtue of the very fact that they were represented there, were committing themselves to sharing their know-how, sharing their knowledge, sharing their expertise, their technical expertise in order to take the whole organization forward. So time went on, things changed as the years went by. And we ended up with a situation where people started looking at the level of representativity on this council and feeling that some people were overrepresented, some were underrepresented. There was a lot of argument about the very legitimacy of the POC and about its future. There was a lot of talk about that at the last congress. And what kind of answer did we come up with and answer to all of these questions? Well, I think that the answer that we came up with indicated a deep commitment to the POC on the part of members. And that also, that deep commitment also means that there's a huge responsibility that's now borne by the POC. We are obliged to be relevant. We're obliged to continue to work as proactively, as intelligently as possible. This is implicit in the way that we now operate. We have enlarged our membership to 48, so we are more inclusive. We do better represent different regions of the world. And I'm delighted to see that. I think that the way that the POC is now operating with 48 members is indeed extremely gratifying and does represent progress. However, if in the future we are to continue to work in a way that is truly relevant to the evolving world in which we find ourselves, we need to establish a dialogue with the consultative committee that is both smooth and enriching for both parties. Now, since the election of the new CC, whenever it has met, the chair of the POC has attended, has made a statement and has been there to answer questions. We have seen that the consultative committee is now structuring its work in a very interesting way. And I do thank you, Walter, for your presentation. I learned a lot from it and I now clearly understand how you are organizing the work of the CC and I think what you're doing is excellent. So we see the way that you're structured, the way that we are structured, and we now have to see how these two structures can truly dovetail, how they can speak to one another and work together for the good of this union. We have our way of working, you're going to have your way of working. I don't want to go into all the details of this, but we have to reach a common understanding on how we're going to work. You talked about your work areas, your six chapters. We have to consider how we can take them into account in our work and our discussions in the most productive possible way. You talked then about these six areas, which might become seven. And it seems to me that economic thinking is important and thinking about the economics of what we do is important. And this is in line with what the DG and the DGG have said, where they talk about transforming the IB to make it a kind of think tank. And I think that anything that can feed into that is very welcome. For too long, Walter, we have found ourselves frequently in different bodies involved in a rather sterile economic discussion when we talk about the postal economy. And I think that the postal economy is something that has to be more realistic and more realistically embedded in the work of what we do. So you talked about your six chapters and you said there might even be seven. I think there might even be eight. At the Innovation Forum, for instance, we had a lot of talk about startups that relate one way or another to our sector. And all of these startups are really making us think, are pushing us forward. And I think we have to find some way, at least from time to time, of allowing those voices to be heard here so that we can really understand what they're doing and they should continue to shake us up and shake us out of our comfort zone. That's something we want. So I'll leave it up to you to think of how we might actually achieve that. And let's bear in mind something else as well. We want dialogue with newcomers. We are very eager to hear what they have to say. And we very much hope that they won't be disappointed in us and in what we do. They must not be disappointed. We must have a genuine dialogue that both parties can feel is worthwhile. I think you know what I'm getting at there. I'll just leave it at that. Now, one other comment on the issue of comparisons. We're thinking about the task force and its work and we know that the task force took an overview of what we do here within the UPU and thought about how we might do things better and compared to what we do with other international organizations. I think that was quite a legitimate exercise and indeed a useful exercise. Even if only to reassure ourselves that we're doing pretty well, that we are pretty relevant. So, okay, so we did that. We did that exercise of comparison with others. I think you have to recognize that there is something very specific to the UPU and that is the universal service obligation. Universal service is a key part of the life of UPU, the history of UPU. It's something that's really pivotal for us and it has a clear impact on the profits of designated operators. I remember in this very room, we had a meeting where we had representatives of different international organizations. Present a while ago, there was somebody here from ITU, I think from Waipo and a number of others. And I remember talking to them about what they did and I said to them, look, in your work, universal service or something like that, does that come up? Does that have any kind of impact? And people's eyes opened very wide because for most of them, it was just not something that they thought about at all. They didn't have to deal with anything like universal service. It wasn't part of their remit. Now here, we have to have a global interconnected network that allows us to provide universal service. This involves linking operators from all countries of the world and in many of these countries, there really is not a very big market. And that's why you have to have an operator in each and every country, guaranteeing that every man and woman on this planet has the right and the ability to receive letters and parcels. Now I don't want to take up too much of your time, but I would just like to bring my comments to a conclusion by flagging a few other points. I'm going to carry on being myself for as long as I can here. I see Sifa's going, oh, dear, dear, what might happen now? But I think that today, we're at a point where we're looking forward to the 2023 Extraordinary Congress. Where we stand, that's on the horizon. I were terrified of getting there with nothing. We have to have something. We have to have something. What are we going to say to 192 countries next year? What are we going to say if we haven't done anything about opening up? We have to do something. Now I think we have to think realistically about this Congress. What really is the point of this Congress? Now I believe that it was actually France when we were preparing for Abidjan that suggested that we have an Extraordinary Congress so I realized that there must be a point. But what was the point? Well, the fact is that we looked at where we were in the run-up to Abidjan. And we said, look, we're not going to manage to take all the decisions we have to take in Abidjan. Not all issues are ripe for a decision at this time. We've had all the problems of COVID. We've had all kinds of things that have held us up in our progress. We're not going to be where we want to be by Abidjan. We all said that. However, we also felt, but look, we can't wait another four or five years before we decide on things. So we're not ready to decide everything in Abidjan, but on the other hand, these decisions cannot be put off for four or five years. So let's keep up the pressure, keep up the progress. That's why we need an Extraordinary Congress. And actually, I think we were right in that. And I think the proof that we were right can be seen just by looking around this room here. The fact we're here today shows that we're moving in the right direction and at the right speed. So specifically, what are we going to have to decide next October at the Extraordinary Congress? There's certainly a lot of room for talking, but what I would say clearly is that we don't just want to take decisions for the sake of it. We have to decide on what we really want to decide and then go ahead and decide it. Thank you. Thank you. Merci infiniment, Jean-Paul. Thank you. Thank you, Jean-Paul. I would like to confirm to Siva, yes indeed, Jean-Paul was true to himself. So thank you, Siva, for giving him the right to do that. The opening up of the UPU to the wider postal sector players is not something that runs counter to the interests of DOs. We all agree that we are seeking common objectives here. We want to have an interconnected interoperable network involving everyone and that has to be a global network. So thank you, Jean-Paul, for being so open and frank and for speaking so clearly and so eloquently. I'll now give the floor back to my co-chair, Stuart. Stuart, you have the floor. Thank you, Samir, and I'll join you in thanking Jean-Paul for being true to himself and providing some provocative and interesting thoughts. I think some interesting reflections on how the POC was created in the 1960s, recognizing a changed market and the fact that we needed a technical body where operators could exchange views. As he suggested, I think at one point in his remarks, we're at a similar point today where we have the market evolving again with a lot of things happening outside the UPU. And so figuring out that relationship between the consultative committee and the POC and other UPU bodies in particular is really why we're here. I also appreciate his reminding us that, in a sense, he is the father of the Extraordinary Congress since France had the idea that this was necessary. And I'd only remarked that in making that comment, he is previewing the third work stream, which we're not really talking about today, but the fact that reform is a continuum. And we're looking today at institutional changes, access to products and services. As he said, we recognized we couldn't do everything in Abhijan. We recognized we won't be able to do everything in wherever we're going to be and we'll make that decision tomorrow. But we will hopefully set ourselves up through our discussions here on these two topics to consider further changes down the road at future Congresses as well. So thank you, Jean-Paul, that's a very helpful perspective of the operator and of the Postal Operations Council. But we, of course, have two other stakeholder groups in the union. And I wanted to turn first to the representative from Uruguay who's gonna join us, hopefully online, Mr. Guzman Acosta Ilarra, who is the director and a pardon for my Spanish here because I may have difficulty. National de Telecommunicaciones y Servís de Comunicación Orvisua. And he represents the ministry that oversees postal issues in Uruguay. And we would welcome your comments or from your perspective. Good morning, everybody. And I'd like to welcome everybody present today. This organization with such a long history that is without a doubt that we'll be taking important decisions. As an organization, the UP is legendary and it has to adapt. And in doing that, you have to take decisions together which reflect the technological changes we're seeing. The role of the wider postal sector is important for designated operators. It's important that players from the wider sector and DOs can operate together. We are in favor of opening up. Denying the opportunities which come from opening up is a tantamount to rejecting the reality of the situation. The organization cannot stand by and be on the sidelines as technological change takes place. We need to move with the times. We're in a world where the public sector faces many challenges. We have an obligation to provide universal service. Today, postal services are interconnected and the role of technology is growing ever more important. Infrastructure and a communication network are dealing with ever greater volumes and are moving into different areas of logistics, for example. And we're seeing the active involvement of the private sector. And that can benefit more effective services. So as I say, we don't want to stand on the sidelines while these trends continue to develop. Uruguay, through its policies, is promoting growth and development in the postal sector. The designated state operator competes with other postal services, including private ones, national and international ones. We establish the framework for competition. And through that, we seek to maintain specified quality levels encompassing quality and accessibility of postal services. The DO in Uruguay has existed since 1915 and it's a very long-standing organization and it participates actively in ensuring universal service. It covers 41% of the market and 13% is in the area of parcel post. But it's important to recognize the rest of the market as well. So it's important for this organization to open up. We believe that that can be of wider benefit. So we're seeing the active participation of the Uruguay Post with its long-standing history, with its built-up networks, ensuring access and universality. But there's also the issue of legislation which allows for the interoperability of the networks. These experiences are essential, of course. We believe that through these processes, we can create value, we can create wealth, if we look beyond our organizations to wider participation and governments have a key role in that process. They have in their hands the regulation of the entire postal sector. We must understand the impact that opening up will have. We cannot underestimate its significance for designated operators and for the provision of their services. There are really two worlds, one market which is highly profitable and the other not. But those two come together when it comes to delivering services to customers. People need, people want an efficient service, a swift service with the guarantees that we talk about in this organization, respecting the basic principles of good service and universality. These are guarantees to society as a whole. The current market is undergoing profound change which are linked directly to the changes that we're seeing in technology. Startups are involved in this fast pace of change that we're seeing. We need to harness that. We cannot fail to participate in these changes, fail to benefit from these changes. And that's why what we're talking about is so important. Our history of 150 years at the UPU is a huge resource, something that can contribute to creating much greater value in this time of change to the benefit of all. So I think that we can continue to talk but it's more important that we move to act, that we take the decisions that are on the table and that we work together, governments and organizations to understand what is possible. I think we need to move from the moment of discussion as important as they are in our meetings to the moment of decision making, decisions that will enable us to face up to these new challenges based on the principles of plurality and freedom. And with that, we can add a huge amount of value. We can enrich our knowledge, our services and we can really harness the changes that are underway while still providing the guarantees that we have done for so long. I think we're looking at a win-win situation and that this process of opening up will be a benefit to the organization as a whole. Organizations cannot stand still. They have to keep on developing moving forward. And I think that with this process, we can move forward to a bright future. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Guzman for those thoughtful comments from the government perspective. It's very helpful and as we'll hear in the afternoon, I think your comments about the importance of action, the need not, the fact that we cannot simply remain where we are, that reflects where many governments throughout the world are and we'll share results of the survey in more detail when we reconvene this afternoon. I'd also like to thank you for your comments about interoperability of networks. That anticipates, I think the discussion we'll have later this morning about products and services and reflects something that I think many task force members have been reflecting on the fact that changes are occurring at a national level in many countries. And our work on products and services is intended not to steal the thunder of my C2 colleagues is intended to explore how that can happen on a UPU level as well. Well, I'd like to turn now to our fourth distinguished panelists, Zahidi Abdul Karim, who is with us from Malaysia and who is the head of Postal Courier and E-commerce Services Division at the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission. And he will share with us the perspective of a regulator looking at this important issue we're addressing. So, Zahidi, as you wish, yeah. Good morning. I don't have many slides. I don't have even one slide. I thought it's a double style because I be said this is a double style but I think this is okay. I think we are ready for the start-up style, a bit more relaxed. And I'm very glad the conversation that we already have this morning from a chair of a consultative committee. I think we can see the what we call it the prosperity that the UPU can bring to the wider post-the stakeholder. I think that is certain. The only thing is the pace that we can do. I think the wider stakeholders, when I talk in Malaysia, they also thinking how they can be part of the United Nations to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goal, for example. When we talk about, for instance, the climate change or climate action, we cannot talk only about last month delivery of the post because the post of the last month is just only a portion of the big last month in our country nowadays. And when we talk about dominance like our chair of the CC States, then we have to ask ourselves in our domestic market, who is the dominant player nowadays? Is it the post or is it the private sector? I think the reality now has changed a lot and we have to be true to the reality that how can we address the reality on the ground in terms of our policy, in terms of partnership, in terms of regulation, in terms of policy? I think UPU can play an active role and we are very glad and happy to see that UPU play a leadership role in this one because we are now in a chicken and egg situation whereby many member states are looking at UPU, how can we deal with this thing? And UPU also start to think how member states are dealing with the wider stakeholders. I think many member countries are definitely looking at how UPU is going to deal with the wider stakeholders. And I'm also agree with our chair of POC that we are not talking about opening up or closing up, we are already being opening up for many, many years. We are now talking about the value of partnership, the equal partnership that we are talking about. See, the problem with us is sometimes we think that we bring value to the stakeholder, but I think the matter of fact is stakeholder has a huge value that can bring to the post or to the post or stakeholder. I think that is something that mindset that we need to shift. And perhaps we can also relook at our mission statement in our constitution that we should really give a lot of value in terms of partnership in our mission statement rather than we put on the bottom. That is the things, the DNA of the future of UPU that you become the platform for multi stakeholders, not withstanding that we understand the importance of universal service. Of course, we need to be cautious about this. We do step by step. We have a lot of committee. We have a lot of discussions, but we need to have a clear vision that UPU should be the center gravity for the wider post or stakeholder. I think that is something, a vision that we need to really look at the UPU Congress and UAE, right? UAE is it? Looking at Malaysia, I think perhaps I would share a bit how our experience in dealing with wider stakeholders, we are not a perfect model, of course, but perhaps we can share with you that in the last 30 years, we have been struggling as well how to deal with a wider stakeholders. I think we know 30 years ago, the post start to separate between the government and the operators. I think many discussion about how to separate that one. I think we have passed the stage of separations and then we have the law how to deal with the USO with the corporations to deal with the USO because USO is a public service, is run by the private operator. I think many countries now are still struggling how to deal with that one, especially now when our male volume is declining. And in government is also thinking how are we going to deal with the USO? And I don't think we have a good solution at the moment and we are not really addressing the real problem of the USO in light of declining male volume. I think this is a real problem for many member states. For Malaysia, every decade, I can give a summary that every decade, 10 years, we have some transformation. I think when we separated the post and the government in terms of USO delivery, and then we form a regulator 10 years after that from the government to independent regulators. And from that time, we already started to have like the post plus, meaning there are private operators, the courier operators, we start to bring them a bit, but they are not really parts of our policy making. They are in our radar, but they are not really the one who, we should say we regulates a lot. USO is still the biggest component. But the last 10 years in 2012, we changed the law and we have the mandates that we know that things change and we need to have a vision for the next 10, 20 years. And we have incorporated a law that we redefined the meaning of posts to include wider stakeholders as placed on the delivery parts. So they are all now become part of our radar and of course for regulated to regulates posts, USO, and a wider stakeholder is going to be more challenging. So we need more innovation. I think we have a session on post-regulation innovations, how to regulate a wider stakeholders. We cannot regulate wider stakeholders like we regulate USO. Definitely we can't do that. We need to find ways how to do it. We need a more consensus. We have a lab. We have a common objective in terms of development. So we have a principle of regulate for growth. So we cannot regulate just for the sake of we have USO. We need to regulate for the prosperity of the country. We need to regulate for the citizens and citizens now. They are not really saying I need a post-the service because they have multiple service operator. We look during the COVID if you don't have multi stakeholders delivery operators, the post alone won't be able to deliver the things during the COVID times. They won't. So I think the reality is there is already coexistence of multi stakeholders in the marketplace. So we become the regulator of mail and the regulator of parcel, not only the parcel post, but also for the parcel courier. I think that is something that we are working on. It's a work in progress. It's a very challenging, but I think it's perhaps for us that is the right direction moving forward. We see the market is moving toward that directions. The gravity now we all know the center gravity is no longer in letter service. It's all in a small packet. It's all in the parcel service. So we need to shift our gravity a bit toward a parcel, and this requires some adjustment. Again, my final notes, Mr. Moderator, I think UPU is ready for the next Congress to shift the center of gravity from a pure post to the post plus. I think that is my final conclusion. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Abdul Karim for those thoughtful comments from the regulatory perspective, reminding us that each of our countries has a different regulatory regime, and we're all grappling with how to address the changes in the market. And of course, as we look at opening, we need to consider what, if any, impacts there would be on that front. I'm sure wider sector stakeholders will have a word to say about that too, and what they think the consideration should be. So, friends, we've heard from our four distinguished panelists here. We now have a little less time than we anticipated for questions and answers, but it's really an opportunity to turn to all of you to ask questions of the panelists to seek to explore some of the issues that they have identified. And again, I would stress that what we're doing this morning is a warm-up for what will be much more open, hopefully discussion this afternoon where we will all exchange views, frankly, respectfully, of course, but to get the widest possible input and to really have a detailed discussion about what institutional changes might be appropriate for the UPU going forward. As I've said, based on the survey we did, with all of your input, the task force has come up with certain recommendations. You've heard some comments from the panelists, I think they relate to those recommendations, but now it's your chance to follow up on that. And so I'd open the floor. Is anyone willing to ask the first question? And we no longer have placards. I would ask you to identify yourself, but again, we're not holding to you to whatever you say. It's not a national position. We're in an exploratory phase here. We're having discussion, hopefully that is open to explore the issues our speakers have identified. Please, yes. And if you could identify yourself. Thank you very much. My name is Cornelia Berger. I'm a head of department in Uniglobal Union for Post and Logistics. We represent postal and logistics trade unions all around the globe. And we are a member of the CC. We are already long-term member of the CC. And of course, we fully support the opening up of the UPU to divide the postal sector. But of course, because of the nature of our organization, we just want to keep in mind that this opening up should be done in a very careful way and not only based on money, but also, and I think that's the spirit of the UPU and also always the spirit of the consultative committee to give room and the opportunity to NGOs and to postal player sectors which are not in a business environment, but representing all kinds of parts of the population and parts of the citizens and parts of the postal workers, giving everybody the opportunity to be involved. And I know we had some discussions, just I wanted to raise that here, that we are very much in a discussion always focusing on the wider postal sector in terms of competitors, but also we should seek out and get involved more NGOs and more organizations which are not profit-oriented to ensure that the CC keeps the spirit of including everybody. I just wanted to raise that, but also to bring that point into the discussion. Thank you. Thank you very much. That's a very important point. I don't know if any of our panelists, perhaps Walter wants to comment on that, but the reforms that were adopted in Abhijan enabled individual companies to join, but it's important that associations, NGOs, retain the right and ability to be represented in the CC. Walter? Well, first of all, thank you very much, Uniglobal, to be also a repertur for one of the chapters. This is very important. Thank you for that. But I want to build onto your comment, Cornelia, because this is an extremely important point. And I also would like to take this opportunity to clarify for those who are shocked by these high numbers when it comes to membership fees. This touches upon certain non-for-profit organizations who cannot afford 10, 15, 20, or even 3,500 Swiss francs. There is a clear provision, and I'm looking now at the chair of the CA, there's a clear provision that allows for those organizations to qualify entry into the CC with the same rights of any kind of non-governmental organization and plea for a reduction of membership fees. So the door is not closed at all. It's actually wide open. It has not been communicated enough. And we have two or three issues already where we're looking into those applicants. So they are more than welcome, and we shouldn't forget, and I emphasize that I guess during the POC at one point, the postal service is a people's business. And when we go through digitalization, we have to be extremely careful not to lose the people at the ground because they are responsible at the end for a high quality of service for those customers who are paying our fees. That's very important. Thank you, sorry. No, thank you. Those are key points to remember the backbone of our institutions. I think John Paul has a comment to... Oui, j'ajoute quelques mots. Yes, thank you. I'd just like to add a few comments. Let's not forget as postal operators that we are employers. We employ an awful lot of people. And that means that it's our responsibility to think about the future, not just for our companies, but also for our employees, the people whose wages we pay, after all. And it was perhaps a little surprising to hear earlier that in France Post, we've lost two thirds of our volume. And clearly that has a knock-on effect on employment. I don't want to go on about this too much, but I am aware of the issue. And I do think we have to bear in mind our corporate social responsibility as employers alongside everything else. Maybe another point. In this cycle, more than in the past, we in the POC are trying to listen to our customers, listen to what the customers want. And within the consultative committee also, we now have partners, we're listening to them and so on. But, and this is not an easy question to answer. How are we going to attract people who represent the voices of our customers? Our customers. And I'm not thinking now exactly about our clients. I'm thinking about people who pay us. Because often we end up really serving the customers of our customers, so to speak. Come in as well. I believe the president and our council, you should take the floor. I think our chair would like to take the floor, so I'll recognize him. And then I think we have China online. And then further speakers. Thank you for giving me the floor. I'm really speaking as a representative of a designated operator from the Côte d'Ivoire. I've listened closely to the excellent contributions we've heard. And more than reassured, I have to say, I noted that we have to recognize the situation on the ground in our documents. That's the first thing. The second thing is changing the mindset, recognizing the paradigm shift. It's something that we have no choice about, even if sometimes we are attached to the way we've done things. And thirdly, the importance of understanding that this is an opportunity for adding value on both sides. We understand that the wider postal sector is an opportunity for the UPU. And the UPU represents an opportunity for the wider postal sector. So I believe that if we are going to tab these synergies, we need to move on to a next stage of open innovation. Because the world has changed and we have to live with disruption. We are working with our experts. We're working with the great advantages we have, but we're not really open to the wider ecosystem, including startups, universities, research centers. And that's where the extra value can be created. We need to obviously formulate recommendations to our meetings. But before we next meet in this room, researchers, startups, innovative enterprises will have found two or three new areas of work, the two or three new innovations. As the chair of the POC has said, it's always been the case that the UPU has been open. So as he also said, perhaps opening up isn't the ideal term because we've always had this principle. But we have it as a principle and it's on the front of all of our documents. So we have to stick with it. But with my, or rather in my humble opinion, looking from the perspective of Africa and the Côte d'Ivoire, sometimes even operators who work with the UPU are also part of other private consortiums. And we can lose our business to them in the name of progress and recognizing the reality in the changing markets. So we need to recognize that threat. We also need to recognize that we're being told to proceed with caution because things are changing. We don't want to be too hasty. But we need to recognize where our interests lie. I think we all agree with opening up. We all agree it's important. But I also think that we should make sure that we forge a consensus as we head forward. Maybe we should focus on interoperability of postal operators and the wider postal world so that there is this kind of unanimous agreement of our mutual needs. So I think these are such important subjects. I don't think that we can close this debate at any given point. It needs to be ongoing. Otherwise we'll just go back to our old ways of doing things. I started putting the postal sector in 2011 and people were already talking about opening up, recognizing the need for cooperation in the area of technological development. We're still talking about the same things today. So maybe our friend from Malaysia was right, that we need to change our mindset. We need to recognize that we're living with a different paradigm. Thank you very much for giving me the floor. Thank you, Isaac, for those reflections. And I think you've highlighted the challenges of the changing environment around us, the speed at which it's changing and how we can respond to that, how changes are happening on a national level with the interoperability that I think our colleagues from Malaysia and Uruguay have mentioned. And I remember what you said the other day as well about not confusing VTAS and precipitation. Speed is appropriate and doesn't necessarily mean we're being precipitate. I don't know if any of our panelists wanna comment or perhaps we can get a couple other comments first. I think we had China online and then the gentleman at the left in India, but I will go first to China online if we're able to do that with our technology. Okay, thank you. Thanks for giving me the floor. I'm from State Post Bureau of China. Just now our moderators and the panelists shared your views with detailed presentations. They're informative and thought-provoking. Concerning this theme, I'd like to put forward two questions to seek opinions from our panelists. Up to now, 13 new members of CC have been approved. As of July 1st, 2022, six thematic chapters have been established to complement the new structure of CC. So my first question is, how should we understand and enhance the CC? Some CC members provided comments for other structure in their responses to the questionnaire sent out by the TF. And my second question is, what is your opinion on the proposal to place the CC under the POC? Thank you. Thank you, China, for those questions. I think I'm gonna go to the other speakers who wanted to intervene. And I would just flag we only have 15 minutes remaining, but those questions are extremely pertinent. And as you'll see in our presentation this afternoon, that is really, those questions are where our open discussion is gonna focus. So I can't guarantee you we're gonna be able to give you a detailed answer in the next 15 minutes, but thank you for putting it on the table and be assured it will be addressed part of this week. So I think we have the gentleman here and then India. I see the United States and Italy as well. And I'm probably gonna have to close the list there in France. But again, be aware that our colleagues in panel two are awaiting their turn. And we have two hours this afternoon as well. So sir, the floor is yours. And please, I'm sorry, I can't see totally well, so if you could identify yourself. I'm the Director General. I'm the Director General of Mauritania Post. My name is Avi Issa. I listened very carefully to what was said here this morning by the various experts who have spoken and made presentations. I think everything that has been said is extremely important. And I really share the views that have been put forward and the goals that have been set. But the fact is that in Mauritania, we don't have the same facts on the ground as in other parts of the world. Yes, we know that things are changing very quickly. Yes, we know that we have new realities to face, but certainly in countries like mine, we have huge challenges to overcome every single day. And we really are going to have to look very seriously at how we operate if we are to be able to continue in future and to achieve the kind of goals that have been set. Given the reality of the hardships we face today and given the reality of the competitors we face today, we, developing countries like my own, have huge problems to overcome. And we must recognize that the post is not a priority for our countries because we have so many other problems to deal with. So given where we are right now in the middle of a very, very difficult situation where we have unfair competition from a number of other players in the postal sector, and I'm talking about players coming from developed countries, we really are in an extremely challenging situation. I noted what Jean-Paul Forceville said, and he said that as posts, we employ a lot of people. That's certainly the case in your country. And it's certainly the case in my country. Also, we're a major employer, but that's not the case for our competitors. For these private sector operators who are coming into our country, they don't have the same problems of having to pay wages, having to pay national insurance contributions and so on. They really don't have the kind of problems that we have. So I would just emphasize that developing countries today are finding it increasingly difficult to guarantee any kind of universal service. And the problems are just piling up. And as I say, this is not a top priority for our governments. I don't have an answer to all this. I'm just flagging the fact that we have real problems and we need real solidarity if we're all going to be able to move forward together. Thank you. Thank you for those comments. That's an important reminder that we all approach this issue from different positions. And what we're doing in the UPU is trying to find a solution that can reflect all of those different situations and be tailored to it. So that will also be food for thought. I will go to the other interviewers. Others who have requested the floor then give our panelists a brief moment to speak. I think India was next on my list. Thank you, Chair, for giving me the floor. Let me identify myself. My name is Sandeep and I'm from Department of Post, Ministry of Communications, India. And while setting the stage, you said that the opinion expressed here are not of governments or operators and I use that liberty. So let me be open and let me agree to the first comments of John Paul that we should be taking that thing out of mind that UPU is closed as of now. And maybe we are open, we are encouraging players to come in. And maybe in 2023 or 2024, when we move to the 150th year celebration of setting up of the union, we may have to take this psyche out of our minds and be very clear that the union is open for all because in the personal experience, no open institution has been able to thrive. So the question goes to Councilative Committee. First of all, let me congratulate. You have doubled the membership in the last one year. And along with that, you did made a statement that none of the rapporteurs in Councilative Committee, they are not belonging to the market giants. That brings to the question, are the market giants whom we are cautious about joining the UPU and disrupting our market share? Are they really interested in joining the UPU? And that does come from a genuine concern when we went out with the survey, just giving an example and it may a little bit coincide with the second panel also. We have been discussing intensively on opening up of IMPC courts to wider postal sector players. But when we went out with the survey, majority were not at all interested in opening up of IMPC courts. That topic, let's bring up in the second panel. I think that's okay. So I'll relate it as possible as with the first panel's discussion. That came out with the conclusion that whom we are dealing with, calling wider sector postal players or whom we are cautious about, are they really interested in joining the activities of the UPU? That will be the question to the Councilative Committee. And one takeaway from this conference can be that many governments are sitting here, many regulators are sitting here. So when we go back to our own countries, we can encourage the academia or those market giants to come and be a part of Councilative Committee and take active participation in the activities of the UPU. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Sandeep. That's a very good question. I'm sure Walter has noted it and we'll come back to it in a moment. I'd ask each of the three additional countries. I have, again, you're not speaking for your country, but I'd ask you to be brief and then I'll give the four over to our panelists for a brief comment and then Samir will close the proceedings. So Italy, please. Thank you for giving me the floor. I try to be clear and brief. I have just about, I have three questions and three concerns. I'm Alessandra Bellanca from the Italian government and the Italian ministry. So I have to show the government native point of view at this stage. I really appreciate the structure of the consultative committee, but I have some concern about that because I think that you talked about the independency from the UPU members and this is what you said and I want to understand independent from what and from who because at the moment the governative and the regulatory entity are independent from the rest of the operators and the second thing is that you talked about postal players and in the other side the wider postal sector players and my concern is at this stage if there is an opposition between the two parties and not parallel work. So if the work in the consultative committee will be in opposition or in a parallelism and not in the same way of the UPU works. And at the end, my primary concern is that we are probably missing something on the way so the postal service, the universal postal service because UPU is the universal postal union and because the governative perspective is the interest of the community not the interest of the operators not the interest of the economical market. It's something different. We have to understand if the private sector is also a postal operator or if they are not interested in becoming postal operators what is the interest to have from the part of the postal perspective to have private operators is not only a service for delivery but is a postal service. I want to save this image of UPU and the postal constitutional service and guarantee. Thank you. I'm sorry. No, thank you. Those are very important questions and they link to our presentations this morning but we'll also relate to what panel two does. We'll take those as well. I see we are fully going to consume our time and even perhaps a little bit more but we are going to try to and do remember we're going to have all afternoon to continue the discussion and exchange among ourselves. Let's see, I think we have the U.S. and France and then we'll close things with brief comments. David, please. Yes, speaking as an individual and not for the U.S. government regulators or designated operator, I would say that if you actually look at the numbers from the survey there was actually very significant support among government regulators and wider sector postal players for a robust business council. That's the first point I would make. Jean-Paul noted in the 1960s that the POC was created to give a voice to designated operators. I think in the 2020s a big voice, a meaningful voice needs to be given to wider sector postal, excuse me, wider sector players, in particular non-designated operators. The metaphor used was the UPU has not been closed but I would modify that metaphor to say that the door has been opened but the crack has been about a centimeter wide and it's only a little bit of light coming in. The door needs to be open much wider, a meter wide and having a meaningful voice for outside players. Now what that means concretely remains to be determined. I believe that the consultative council was created in 2004 through the last 18 years. It had on average a little bit over 15, maybe 18 members. That's an extremely small number. By contrast, the ITU, International Telecommunication Union has had over 900 members. That organization has not collapsed by opening wide and having a meaningful voice like a business council. They have a council structure which is like a business council. They don't have a CC, they have a business council. It's a dynamic organization that works well in partnership between an equivalent of designated operators and wider sector players. So I would make a plea that as we consider how to strengthen the operations of the consultative council that it be given a meaningful role in allowing a voice, not just necessarily via the reporters, but a direct opportunity for outside sector players to have a voice going directly to both the CA and the POC. This union will not collapse if they have an outside voice. That will only strengthen the union. Thank you. Thank you, David, for those thoughts. We are getting a good range of metaphors in our presentations today. So I thank you all for that. Again, our discussion this afternoon, you made some comments about the business council, what you thought an enhanced consultative committee should look like. That's going to be our focus this afternoon. Is where we're coming out in the task force in our report the right place on institutional reform? Has it addressed the concerns that some of you identified on various sides? So that's where we will continue, I think, at 2.30. And I think, Farid, you asked for the floor? Oui. Thank you, Stuart, for giving me the floor. I'll be very brief because everything I wanted to say has already been said, particularly by my colleague from Mauritania. So I won't take very long at all. So rather than picking up each point one by one and at the risk of eventing my American colleague who's just spoken because he's already said to me a number of times in the task force, we've been talking about this for 20 years, I would still like to say, given how short we are for time, to actually raise the issue of time. We're here at the UPU Universal Postal Union, which has those three words, universal, postal and union. I don't want to see it come union for universal business. I don't want to really go there today. I believe it is possible for the UPU to operate with a role for business at its heart. No, I wanted to talk about time. It's a scarce resource for postal operators. We're asked to move as quickly as we can. We're being asked overnight to compete against the private sector to develop a business model when we have a number of challenges such as the huge number of public employees we have normally with the second largest public employer after education. So with all of these challenges, there's a lot to be aware of. We're being asked to change our business model to compete with those who aren't subject to the constraints that we have, universal service, inclusive financial services, etc. We're being asked to be as effective as the private sector, but they're obviously hampered, constrained by so many factors that the private sector isn't. And in all of this time is key. It's necessary to adapt the bidis model while at the same time we understand that time is the scarcest resource for anybody trying to make these changes. The private sector is a lot freer to operate within these constraints. It's not so difficult for them to move swiftly. John Paul reminded us a moment ago about the extraordinary Congress. I actually suggested at one point that we have an extraordinary Congress dedicated solely to this, because it would be good to have a dedicated space and time to actually talk about it. It's not really a typical topic that we could deal with in one or two meetings. Thank you. Thank you, Fareed. Again, a lot of food for thought. We are unfortunately at the end of our time for this morning, and we don't want to overrun. We want to have time on products and services. So I'm going to close the discussion there and with apologies to the panelists, I'm not going to ask you to respond right now. Perhaps you can reflect over the next hour or two. I will give you the opportunity this afternoon to address. We've heard a number of points, questions from Italy, China, comments from the United States, France, India, others. Mauritania asked you to respond to those points that have been raised. And we'll start there, and then we'll have hopefully as robust a discussion as we've had this morning. But I would ask Samir to, for his thoughts and his closing comments as we wrap up this first panel. Samir, the floor is yours. Thank you, Stuart. Thank you, Stuart. And I would like to thank everyone who's participated in the discussion this morning. I really thank those who made presentations. They were of very high quality. And I also thank all of those who made comments. I just wanted to take up a couple of points. I was particularly struck by what was said by our colleague from Uni Global and also the comment from the chair of the CA, my dear friend Isaac. I noted also what was said by my dear friend from France. And what I wanted to emphasize is this. Wider postal sector players is a term that includes universities, research bodies. It's not just private postal operators. It's everyone who's involved in any way in the sector or in the supply chain. Everyone who in any way is involved in the provision of postal services. I wanted to make that point. Secondly, on this issue of the use of the term opening up, we're talking about opening up the sector today. Now think about our union. Think about it as a building. It's like a building where you have one big door, you get into the building and then to go to different apartments, you have lots of little doors. Now, you can say today that the main door to the building is open, but some of the doors getting you into particular apartments are still closed. That's my second point. My third point. I would like to reassure everybody that all of the questions and comments that have been raised are very valuable, but many of them will be clarified this afternoon, where we go on to have more explanation of the outcome of the work done by the group. That's it for now. I hand it back to you. Thank you, Samir, and thank all of you for your attention and your participation in questions. You've given us a lot of food for thought for this afternoon. So come back, as Russ suggested, Tuesday in our C2 meeting with Nye Sharpened and GrillPlan, and we'll be on warm aim, too, to continue the discussion. So thank you. Sorry. I'm not sure. Oh, no. That way you and I can talk with each other. There we go. Hey, Will. Oh, yeah, I saw it. I was impressed. Why? It was just beautiful, like everything coming out of Italy. So much virtuosity and elegance. We went just this time like that. Tony, yeah. He's the Italian. He's the Italian. He's the Italian. He's the Italian. He's the Italian. He's the Italian. He's the Italian. He's Italian. I'm sure he's Italian. Is that right? Oh, my God. I had no idea. I had no idea. Did you know what that is? I think it's against, you know, a Canadian, but, you know, the most relevant people in the world. I'm also Italian. Well... Isn't that something? Small world, right? I had no idea. He was totally like... Small world. Wow. Unbelievable. Yeah, and you saw... They don't shut me down. You know, is this any surprise? Like, I'm always two steps behind. We're not even one step behind. I'm like two steps behind. That is awful. Should we get started? Yeah. All right, ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen, let's get started. If you would all take your seats, please, and hook in, grab yourself a coffee and a tea, a glass of water. Let's get started. I wish you all the best. It's me. Yeah. Sorry, everybody. It's me. This is... This is... Can you say that? Hi, testing the mic here. Perfect. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we're almost ready to go, so we'll give people just 60 seconds more to take their seats and start on this discussion on the second piece of business that we have. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for returning and thank you very much to our first panelists for running a very interesting panel and very interesting discussion. So, Samir and Stuart, thank you very much. We're now going to move on to a discussion regarding UPU products and services, but before doing that, I'd like to introduce myself to you and then turn the floor over to my co-chair. I just have a few or brief remarks. I'm Ben Nugopal. I'm coming from Canada, and I'm one of the co-chairs of Committee 2 of the Council of Administration. Now, just to start off on maybe a bit of a lighthearted note, our chair of the POC had made the comment that he was urged to be himself. I'm here to tell you that I was urged to do the exact opposite when I told my wife we were coming and doing this regulatory conference and I said, you know, should I be myself? She said, Raj, do not be yourself. I've been it's been told to me once that if you can imagine, you know that movie Pirates of the Caribbean? If you take Captain Jack Sparrow and put him in a suit and tie, that's what you have as your moderator. So, let's have some fun today and let's really get into the subject matter and enjoy ourselves. Now, one of the four worst words I suppose anyone can hear in a relationship is to talk. But ladies and gentlemen, we really do need to talk. We have an extraordinary congress coming up in 2023 and as our chair from the United States mentioned we have a lot of work to do in front of us and this discussion not just on the structure of the UPU but the products and services that we wish to open to the wider postal sector to understand each other and we need to come to some very solid understandings on what we agree on and just as importantly what we disagree on. So in this session and over the next between now and 1.15 I urge you, ask your questions. Do not temper them. Do not make them polite and do not make them diplomatic. Make them cutting. Ask your question and if you don't get an answer or one of our panelists or even each other if they don't answer your questions or if they say something that perturbs you, follow up. Press them on it. Get an answer and make sure that all of you leave here with at least a better understanding of what we're talking about when we talk about opening the union to the wider postal sector. Now I want to urge you to think about four questions. The first is whether you're inside the UPU or outside the UPU or somewhere in between what is it that we do well that those that are seeking to engage with the UPU what is it that we're doing well that you want in with? And then the second question of course the other side of that is what are we doing poorly at the UPU? Where are we messing things up in your opinion? Where are we getting it wrong with regards to the types of products and services we have? And then turning the question back to our colleagues who are outside of the UPU the question for you of course is just the inverse. What are you doing well that you think that we should learn about and we should engage and that you can give us you can sell us, you can license to us, whatever and what is it that you're doing poorly or you want to do better that you're coming to us for solutions with? So those are the kinds of questions ladies and gentlemen and before I turn it over to Nidmin I want to ask you for the present for the people that are doing presentations we've asked them to keep the presentations tight and keep them short but in the same regard if they are if they've put the time in to prepare for the session and they're keeping their presentations short you folks have to keep your questions short and raise your tight as well so let's make sure if we could get 50 questions back and forth I think that would be a success So with that Nidmin, the floor is yours Thank you Raj I am Nidmin Hassan, head of International Cooperation Egypt Post and also I represent the Egyptian government and the council administration and I would like to serve as the co-chair of committee to policies and regulations and also I have the pleasure to serve here as a moderator. As my dear colleague Raj said be yourself being openly Raj cannot be anything but himself so do I So this is a very good chance where you are expertise from different region of the world have the chance to talk about very important topic which is crucial for the future of the postal network So you are not speaking here as member countries you are speaking here as expertise from the designated operator from the integrators from the government from the wider postal sectors speak about the potentials that you have or the concerns that you have openly because this is a golden chance for all of us to speak openly of course politely It's great pleasure to be here and to speak about a very important topic that it has to do with the postal network that as our dear PUC chair said we inherited a culture in this union and this culture has to do with serving our societies and our citizens and one of our guests, William that I would like to welcome him will show us wonderful presentation which is sophisticated as our union is sophisticated because our union is huge and is presenting a lot for our countries and our nations and our societies and this structure because it's huge and has two faces one is international face which is our supply chain our regulations, our mail system will operate in a standard way across the group in the same time we have this country specific services and features offered to our citizens to address their needs to be affordable as bear their economic levels so this network operate magnificently in these two directions at the same time there is a lot of chances outside so it's a partnership what we can give to directions no cherry picking win-win situation to come together and to develop successful business model between the private operators and the government entities so we have time to keep the ship of the Boston network walking in a stable and balanced way of course we know the resolution of Abidjan it's about the gradual approach step-by-step approach and here are the products and services which are the tools that we serve our community and I would refer back to also to PUC chair when he said that PUC is important for the development of postal services for innovation so I believe the CC can play a role to be efficient and to contribute to a successful business model with the universal Boston Union so here we're looking forward for discussion how to make the balance how to make win-win situation please speak openly about the concerns and the values and this will come Raj I give back the floor to you okay thank you Nermin if we can go to the first slide please for the delegates so here's what our task is today just in this part of the conference this second theme so the first session we talked about the structure of the UPU we heard from some guests and our guests today are going to be speaking about the second work area that we have which is looking at products and services so what we're doing in this session is looking at our four panelists on the list of products and services of the UPU and hearing their thoughts under what terms under which they might access those UPU products and services that are targeted for opening up so those are really the two tasks and if you look at the screen up behind me and on either side of the room you'll see exactly what we're doing now the reason that we're asking these questions are pursuant to solutions that were passed at the Abidjan Congress the first was Congress Resolution C10 2016 actually that was C10 Volsuri and then C11 2021 so let's get to it let's have a robust discussion on your thoughts your views, your concerns and let's have that discussion by the end of this session and by the end of today I hope that we can have a more nuanced understanding and perhaps a more sophisticated understanding of your identification of opportunities of areas of potential collaboration of pitfalls and risks we heard the general from Mauritania speak about some of the risks that opening up has in terms of the structure there's also risks and opportunities with regards to the products and services so that's the whole point of this discussion is to have that robust discussion by please well for the access to UPU products and services we also we are going to address opportunities and challenges so ahead of us as we said there are opportunities and challenges for granting access to wider postal sectors to the Universal Postal Union impact on the postal sector but not limited to on all the aspects of the postal sector limited to universal service obligations interprepility interconnection pricing service features of postal products to also examine that demand and the value of postal sector players for access to UPU products modalities of access such as possible models of access terms and conditions of access so this will be the scope of our discussions today and let's start Raj with our first panelist alright so ask for a round of applause no we're not going to ask for a round of applause he wanted a round of applause before he even started as I said you have to earn your applause alright so let's work these guests hard so our first guest ladies and gentlemen is William Lee he is the Assistant Director of Postal International Engagement with Australia's Department of Infrastructure Transport Regional Development Communication Arts now Will's got a lot of other biographical information here I'm not going to read those but I'm going to ask you two questions Will one is just tell us something about yourself that might be off the menu and what are you looking to get accomplished today what would mean a success for you as being a panelist with all of these folks here today try this one and if it doesn't work we have another one we have to power it on there we go excellent fantastic well thanks Raj look to answer the first question I'm probably a fairly bad Australian I don't like Vegemite so for those that are trying to translate that that's like our national spread that you would put on toast I don't like chocolate so I'm struggling in Switzerland but we also have Tim Tams which are our national biscuit and I'm not a big animal lover so snakes, spiders, kangaroos and koalas don't don't go well for me so that's probably my answer to something that you probably wouldn't know about me the other element to what is success today I think for us having a good conversation having an understanding of what we are talking about what are the frameworks what are the things we need to be thinking about and how we can move the conversation forward to our extraordinary congress next year that for me if we can at least start a dialogue that is framed around the key issues that we need to take forward as governments as designated operators as part of the wider sector then I think we've achieved our mission today so thanks Raj why don't we run right through your presentation yeah let's do it excellent thanks very much excellent we've got the slide up excellent well thank you colleagues bonjour je suis désolé pour ma français I apologise for my French it's not very good if they've struggled to translate even my bad first line so look while speaking from a government perspective today I want to emphasise that the views of mine alone they don't necessarily represent the views of the Australian government or our designated operator but I think it's important to start and say that since 1874 the UPU has served a vital role for governments bringing us together to facilitate communication between our citizens and I think that mission remains as important as ever today as it was back in 1874 even as the services our citizens demand change rapidly and as that demand changes every government that I have spoken to faces the same challenges rising demands for quality parcel services from our citizens declining letter volumes limited government budgets a rising number of domestic providers a need for resilient supply chains and workforces to support those supply chains and the question of how do we support those in regional and rural areas enjoy the same benefits whether that's connectivity or e-commerce as those in our cities so how does this relate to products and services? Products and services are our tools and to go with the theme of doors and houses today just might like you might use a hammer and a nail to build a house and we have our UPU house but our house is old and there are at least for some better houses next door so the data we saw yesterday in CA Committee 3 clearly shows this with every shock the postal sector becomes under even more strain so if we do nothing we risk leaving some of our citizens behind we risk not being able to support our mission of connecting the world we risk leaving our DOs behind so we need to change we need to renovate and like any renovation it will take time it's a step by step approach step by step requires as my colleagues from Kenya so excellently put the other day a new destination to head towards so how do we determine this destination and therefore what tools we need to get us there the starting point is of course to understand what your tools do and I really want to thank Austria and Uruguay for their excellent work so far to build up this knowledge base and I want to build on that and I want to highlight some of the remarks today I want to explore very briefly the various factors governments are balancing and highlight how these relate to the discussion around products and services and there are really six levers that we have and these are the six levers that are on the diagram or behind me social development the obligations of member countries sovereignty and our treaty interactions our demands our governance and our product services and I would add to that our standards these are not new concepts they are directly linked to the constitutional mission of the UPU that every government has adopted and you can see in the little boxes on the slide how each of these relate but they are also interlinked they are the levers we as governments have available to pull our tools, our products services and standards they are one part of the puzzle but not the only part they are win-wins out there but there are really singular choices that solve everything like most other problems governments can and need to pull lots of levers together step by step towards the defined destination and this is how we make meaningful change so to dive briefly into these factors and to first focus on the first one social development is an important responsibility and it can take many forms the benefits post receives under customs the benefits under IKO or the IMO treaties our unique remuneration system membership fees from member countries and designated operators and the technical support and the development assistance that the UPU itself provides through the budget and through voluntary contributions from my perspective postal social development benefits the entire postal system and we need to help those that are going through the transitions that we have already heard about this morning and indeed we heard at S0 our colleagues from Senegal raised genuine concerns about the reduction of social development assistance and I think those comments show that our system is currently funded in an unstable way and we may as governments want to create a more stable and consistent form our products and services help facilitate that but it is ultimately a choice for us as governments on how we're going to deliver the next question I would ask is around one of scale we've heard about the shocks that our sector has faced and the ongoing shift in volume from UPU to commercial networks our UPU imposes non-economic costs on DOs whether that's through delivering last mile delivering out in the middle of nowhere or through terminal dues or other mechanisms QSF it's no wonder our DOs are expressing concerns with opening up we heard yesterday about the important role the postal sector plays in my own Pacific region the post office performs critical functions beyond delivering the mail in Australia for example over 1200 communities rely on the post office as their only bank there's no other bank in town our colleague from Papu said it even better on Tuesday when he said that the post in Africa is more than just a business so how do we support these needs to support the levels of support members are asking for despite diminishing volumes there are really only three basic options we can generate more social development from less volume and I'm not quite sure our DOs would be too pleased if we went with that approach we can cut back and not support those who need it which actually harms us all or we can grow our base and share the load and create a more equal playing field I would suggest like we heard from our colleagues from Japan and many others that we need to grow our base but that means a major renovation over time to get us there and avoid hurting even further our overburdened DOs our products and services are one way to bring more people to the table but not the only way the final component on social development is around who receives it is it our designated operators is it our citizens directly or is it our member countries who is best placed to support social development I won't dive into that question but I just leave that one with you the second component I want to talk about is around member country obligations so for those following on the slide we've ticked from 12 o'clock to about 2 o'clock the UPU's mission is to form a single postal territory for the exchange of postal items and to achieve this countries have agreed to impose various obligations on one another the most obvious of this is our universal service Canada at the 1999 Beijing Congress summarised it best when they said member countries need to give the world community a full guarantee that universal service will be provided at the world level now I've been asked whether opening up products and services will impact the USO and I would just say as an obligation on member countries it is up to each member how they wish to implement the USO on their territory it is not up to any government to tell any other government how to do this but by the same logic why should any government prevent any other government from implementing an approach government have committed to a quality of access by this I mean you can present any postal item to the border of another country and that country will arrange its delivery within their territory so what threatens the USO is the changing needs of our citizens itself and our unwillingness to bring in all the participants that can serve as that need for governments to safeguard the USO the question then is really what intergovernmental framework and our products and services are key to this ensures governments can continue to decide domestically how best to deliver on their USO commitment for their citizens as part of a globally interconnected network so whilst I suspect governments are not inclined to reduce our UPU obligations to each other it does not mean we cannot work together to make new commitments to each other new safeguards new ways of collaborating and this may be one lever connected with our products and services using our products and services as tools to create win-wins over time the third component that I want to talk about briefly is around sovereignty and treaty obligations the UPU's role is to provide a functional framework outline the common rules and the starting point for that is the sovereignty of our members and this is why for example the designation of designated operators is a member country responsibility but in some cases countries have agreed to voluntarily give up some of their sovereignty some examples of that are the World Customs Organisation Kyoto Convention Post Enjoys a special arrangement there the IKO Conventions the IMO Convention and as Egypt has previously highlighted to us countries also have obligations under the World Trade Organisation and the general agreement on the trade and services these are important obligations for members under these obligations members agree in other forums what the trade rules of the world will be our role here at the UPU is to decide who they apply to and I think one example drawing this back again to products and services is our remuneration system as we heard on Tuesday this has been in place since 1971 the international trade system has changed a lot since then and many academics would suggest our remuneration system doesn't actually align with WTO rules so why do we as governments continue to allow these arrangements I think the answer is looking at our diagram again to support social development but social development for letters we are now needing to support social development for parcels and e-commerce and this may mean needing to reconsider how we set these levers up for the new world when we choose to make an exception to our sovereignty in the interests of the global community we need to ask continually for what purpose who should benefit from it why and what do we as governments get in return now I'm not saying we need to remove these arrangements however using my example when we consider social development does our remuneration system remain the best way to achieve it and is it aligned to modern needs we might actually for example be able to pull these levers in a different way and give our DOs more flexibility and actually generate more money for citizens and designated operators and others to access the services of the future and use our tools in new ways and create a win-win for everyone and an approach that perhaps removes some of those market distortions we currently have now I don't know about this but I put it out there to think about our sovereignty and treaty obligations as UPU members is one lever we have at our disposal to realign the world of the UPU with the needs of our citizens the next is around supply chain integration and the citizen experience our job is to satisfy customers changing needs and our indeed our customers needs have changed we have heard many members including my colleagues from China highlight the need for service equality, security supply chain resilience and oversight and we have heard from the private sector that they struggle with a patchwork of regulatory environments a lack of uniform standards a supply chain where everyone operates to their own terms and a lack of coordination and integration points and our DOs are saying to us that they cannot provide the services that consumers want and this is shrinking their market and mandatory tracking is a great example here some members want it some members do not and some members simply do not have the infrastructure for it so what do we end up with an outcome that's the worst outcome for everyone and even if I want to offer that service the only way to do it is to go outside the UPU so as governments we have created these two parallel networks one that's tied to the UPU's social development mission and one that isn't our citizens do not care for such distinctions they want their item delivered quickly at the right price and with the right features and services they would ask why all these players suppliers delivery partners and governments can't simply get together around the table and work it out for governments and I hope I speak for all governments we wish to have efficient trade on an equal playing field UPU's products and services facilitate that as far as they remain relevant to the demands of our citizens and for the governments in developing countries and our colleagues from Maurantania just reminded us about this this morning the challenges of navigating these competing markets when you yourself as a government are not on a level playing field to support your citizens and to regulate these markets differently I can only imagine is an incredible burden for suppliers this mix of systems that add costs to what are essential services now I'm not saying competition is bad actually quite the opposite I think we need to preserve a freedom of choice a freedom our citizens have now but we cannot ask our designated operators to work with a handicap either so again governments can pull different levers together to create win-wins and our products and services are a tool that can help bring people together improve our supply chains and improve our citizen experience the next component on the Gantt chart on the slide is around governance and I know we've talked about that this morning so I won't dwell on that but I just flag that it is a tool we have at our disposal and then finally the product services and standards itself so we're back to about 10, 11 o'clock the UPU is our preeminent standards body for the sector and I think most governments would agree that it should remain so and indeed our standards are probably already open in a sense if our commercial colleagues came to me and said we wish to adopt all the UPU standards for our internal business I don't think I would say no and I don't think the UPU would sue them either so the thing that's really probably closed is the ability to integrate with other players not just the standards but to be able to use the standards with others the ability to access the products and services every player has to offer DO, commercial or our suppliers on the same terms using the UPU's products and services as an intermediary to open this we need to balance out the costs for designated operators in the wider sector opening up a subset of products and services without a clear plan is really unlikely to address these longer term structural issues that our colleagues from Malaysia Uruguay and many other governments that I've spoken to have raised and to recognise we also need to recognise the investment our designated operators have already made into these products and services and their commitment to our social development mission and this is where some of our other leavers working in harmony can create win-wins by looking at these issues as a whole so look I think I've managed to tick up 15 minutes so I'll conclude here for governments we are balancing these six factors our world has changed our union needs to change to meet this and to do so governments we need to agree a plan a destination one that creates win-wins that destination might be 10 years away may be more but we need a plan to make progress we need to pull each of these leavers in a coordinated manner step by step we as governments need a plan that does not leave our designated operators behind that does not leave our wider postal sector players behind that does not leave the commercial sector behind that does not leave our citizens and our businesses behind and that does not leave the UPU itself behind our products and services are one tool we can have to help create these win-wins so I would just conclude today by saying governments I would just ask what is our long-term plan for the UPU thanks very much, thanks coach great job William thank you very much William that was fantastic so without further ado turn the floor over to Nermin to introduce the next our next panelist first I would like to thank William for such a great presentation sophisticated as I said very brilliant and now we welcome our second panelist I believe he does not need any introduction but I will do Mr. Funcinzo Rolio he is the head of international relations with international authorities and organizations both Italian welcome you Mr. Funcinzo we are so happy to have you with us here as one of our panelists to benefit from your expertise about supply chain standard technology and Mr. Funcinzo also supply chain for BUC C1 integrated supply chain and also he is the chair of BUC task force who is working on examining the product and service to be opened UPU product and service to be opened and he shows a great support to the work of committee to CAC2 Mr. Funcinzo first you have the floor to make any presentation for yourself and then to introduce your presentation to our audience thank you Nermin I think most of you know me because I'm a kind of person which like to show itself thank you also thank you also for qualifying my role on top of the others as chair of the BUC task force contributing to the CAC2 expert team works on product and services because today I will act and speak as chair trying to deliver the voice of postal operators it's not only because of my role but because I strongly think that now we have to talk about what is the impact of this opening up on the community and then at UPU level I from the intervention with this morning also my friend William said I mean express some opinions related to the local view of the cooperation with the private sector and so on I think now we have to think what are the solution at the global level live just for a second what are all the situation country by country because this is already a reality otherwise we need to be here because in each country the cooperation already exists and we might discover maybe later that we already benefitted a lot postal operators and stakeholders and we don't know if tomorrow this benefit will be preserved so all that said I prepared a presentation for you because I think we still need to go into some details so I will be very granular in terms of product and services offering you a possibility to reflect on possible impact thank you and so first slide please okay so you I mean look into this slide some of you think this is just sort of inspiration of that plant watering provided in life cycle time by time by time but it's not this is just a storyline from 1999 to 2023 also to to express a relative concept that things can be interpreted by the way you see them from what perspective something that 20 years were a long time and nothing happened because some didn't want to do anything about giving access to product services of the UPU to do the required private post sector well in 2004 the consultant committee was created in 2012 at the Doha congress there was the first resolution resolution C9 already highlighting product and services which were ready to be open to the private sector and this is a list of product which is something we have already reviewed lately when the basket product was refreshed and we are talking about all the services which go in the area of digital services dot post and others was again reconfirmed in resolution C10 at Istanbul congress now I don't know why there was this resolution but nothing happened I don't want to anticipate the question which I will ask later to the consultant committee but of course this is the reality of things nothing happened and resolution were there something anyway happened at the end of Geneva congress and then some acceleration on the this matter was was created a lot of enthusiasm by many parties to understand why we are not doing things and looking for the benefit of this operation in the last cycle we worked a lot with a lot of nice discussion and debate and we will with that provide the resolution C11 at the Abidjan congress which is something we are now referring to I know probably I am annoying for some of you but it is important to know what has been done in the past to look to the future likely few months ago there was some energy to the work of the opening a lot of things would be done a consultation was put out and the AB was very active in elaborating this basket of project and services to analyse and maybe review in the light of a new scenario incorporating other stakeholders in the UPU network next slide please so from the basket we saw that there were a lot of services because one of the characteristics which makes the difference between express courier e-platform and others is that UPU is inclusive in terms of services you know we have a lot of products in the area of financial services digital services one of those is the UPU and I appreciate the fact that from the survey from the wider postal sector even only 12 months the the dot post ranked at half of the desire of stakeholder to be part of it I think we have already a lot of work was already been done so I'm not worried on the fact that we should worry on the fact that we go to the next congress and we don't know we haven't done anything we already know that there are services that stakeholders want and we can work on that at first stage as much as the fact that some from the private sector already are members of the MAB they are members of dot post and we maybe just need to reinforce but probably there is a body here that should care more about that and maybe push more for those stakeholders to get to the works of the union obviously along the services also some let's say treaty or facilities were examined as part of the services, next slide please and one of this was the supply chain and specifically with the reference to the MPC code and the ETO because sometime someone was putting forward the idea that the MPC code is something that can be used MPC code is just an acronymus of processing center you can have an MPC code but you don't do much if you don't have a access to the network electronic network of the UPU and so on so this kind of let's say service as it is the real network of the UPU obviously cannot be analyzed by itself as it was recently discussed services of the UPU in the area of the postal services a little bit as Mikado game if you touch something you have to consider the other so here the example is if we open the network giving an MPC code an access to the platform to anyone we are obliged because of the actual constitution article to process items you know there is not what happens today in the private sector where there are treaties between stakeholders deciding which product which services which area and so on because postal operators are obliged because of the constitution to deliver any shipment which is found on their network so it's just a point to remind that there is a lot of regulation now which also we should look at when we think that we should give access to actual non-members next slide you see this slide is composed of two parts inspired from the remuneration document which was analysed among the others in the basket of product and services and this is a very good example of how we can possibly face this new model in which you don't have only postal operator, postal operator in a country postal operator in another country and other stakeholders in some countries so which is very fantastic I mean everyone is contributing everyone can exchange shipment with the others which means that postal operator can deliver to private sector to postal operator and vice versa but of course also to stakeholders which you know gives me some point of reflection because now there is a little alignment with the actual remuneration system because the actual remuneration system regulates rates at cross border level for delivering in destination country but don't say anything if that flows go to the rural areas or go to the metropolitan areas unfortunately this division makes a lot of difference for anyone who operates on the market and our friends from the private sector don't know that very well I mean as they mostly operate in metropolitan areas so which are the differences here urban area high intensity so low distance cost is very profitable because you know when you have very short distance with a small van you can deliver tons of small packets for instance rural areas is a bit different you need a car you know and then it depends we we were informed of this ranking on best performance countries in the statistic a couple of days ago comparing countries without taking into account the geography of the countries you know I would be best if I was Switzerland or Austria or any other small country it's different when you are Greece you have 2000 islands so this is the point who is delivering to the islands who is delivering into Athens just for you to reflect next slide please so just now to try to put all together what I think are the key issues for both DO's and the wider poster sector sorry that my image is cutting part of the slide but anyway the part on the right is referred to the wider poster sector already incorporated in the consultancy committee so let's look to this slide so we have DO's what is the main characteristic of DO's is the social role the relevance of DO's because they have social role and proximity during pandemic DO's were the first stakeholders the government was looking at when they to issue some special regulation when it was the case of the vaccine they just look to DO's what they have they have the last mile knowledge and capacity of course a postman is someone known by the suburb anyone knows him he knows how to deliver is a known entity is the customer for the customer ok what happens in the from the other part better quality I mean we can recognize that Express Korea e-commerce platform now vertically integrated can give better quality than postal operator and this is the point we now have to see that by the time the POC had its evolution but also the private sector its evolution now we still have some Korea Express but the predominance now of having this new figure which is platform oriented to business model so e-commerce platform that they also market by themselves they cooperate they deliver building a new form which is not cooperation is not competition based competition obviously they are more agile why they are more agile because they have less regulation less complexity obviously they have also some constraint cost to big size of parcel every I say Express Korea would like always to deliver a small packet to fill as much as possible in the van and make cost effective rural areas challenges I mean for you is a challenge because obviously is cost and you are looking to the cost more than we are because you are free we are not we have a social law we cannot decide to close a postal office if the government decide if a postal office can be open can be closed in Italy just to make an example if you want to close a letter box you may do and then the representative of that area they go to the parliament just post Italian you know is not let's say respecting the obligation of the USO so is there a level playing field I don't think so I see differences I see some actors which are serving the government which are customer and business oriented which are trying to make profit in a market which now is obviously shared so we have I mean this came from our discussion we had with our members of the POC Task Force so we have this customer inclusion which is typical from the institutional actor which is the design postal operator towards commercial approach we have the collaborative network which is the members which are the members of the UPU towards the competitive network now what is important to say and to highlight is that global pair from the private sector are already integrated because they don't need to look at how standard are applied in certain countries while postal operator now and I can testimony that since I'm serving as co-chair of committee one we still are struggling despite a lot of let's say development were done with getting data from ITMAT still some countries are not able to give information to make the supply chain functioning you know that does not happen for private sector because they have their own standard it's a little bit like Mcdonald you go anywhere everywhere in the world you settle your shop you sell the same hamburger that you know you say in Washington in Helsinki in Rome I mean it's the same so that's the facilitation it's not the same for us we still have to to fight with gaps which are among 992 countries of course we speak about Europe if we speak about design operators in industrial countries which are well I mean made on the market expressing quality is something but what about the others I mean we are the UPU we cannot leave anyone behind we have to consider that we are in an organization where everyone has to be on board and everyone has to be considered and of course the impact which we still have to start I remind you can be very different from country to country from region to region I don't want to say more on the USO because I've been accused in the past of being a defender of the USO but it's a constraint for postal operator however however it's not under the responsibility of the UDO this is an issue under the responsibility of regulators and ministries because if tomorrow anything will impact the USO will be certainly not an issue for DOs will be an issue for governments I'm sure it will be next slide please so anyway you know you know me and I'm always propositive so I think among these that some of you would have seen as provocative was just what I thought were the basic elements which we also recently discussed in our meetings I wanted to share with you to make everyone aware of which are the pillar of this network I mean obviously from the perspective of postal operators I think we can do something but what do we need here do we need two things first thing we need is a level playing field if we just left the previous chart on which I don't think there are the conditions for level playing field and I think our friend from was Mauritania I think before just made a very clear expression of that you know saying we are challenging you know day by day for trying to serve with to serve our customer how can we now compete with someone who has already everything come here and impose you know it's a better quality efficiency customer experience and everything can we do that can we combine can we build cooperation between those two parties of course if we enter into a cooperation we will need the reciprocity so let's make an example between post-italian and my friend from UPS once I mean you know it will be ready to give us some volumes on our network and we have arranged on the price which of course will be regulated by the UPU post-italian will be happy also to send to them volumes and maybe you know in some part of the world which we have some difficulties with postal operator for other logistic means maybe because flight connection and so on so these are point what we should keep in mind we know that and Jean Paul said that before I mean we have always been markets are always open already open I just talk with friends in other country that they say our market is shrinking and the others doing everything let's see whether and think if this process will lead to get back the volumes declined to the postal operator or will accelerate the decline of volumes of postal operator this is just a question for you but we will lay time this afternoon to answer that thank you actually Raj we have I believe our panellists have heard our advice and this spoken openly we have the regulator who suppressed his obligations and his views and the operator also who suppressed his concerns and he's being open to work about when one situation it's time now to listen to our panellists from wider postal sector but I would like to recall the spirit of the union because we are 192 countries we are not on agreement of everything but we come together and work together in the spirit of our union how we address our concerns how you address their concerns how you contribute to it we are looking forward right Raj? absolutely so this is the fun part not that you gentlemen weren't fun but now we get to hear from if I can use the term outside the tent but you know I know that there's a link with the consultative committee but now we get to look and hear from you both you folks who are from outside of the union technically so with that Kate I'm going to give you the option of either starting and finishing from either the podium or the chair the floor is yours I'll give you just a quick intro if that's okay we'll welcome our third panellist now Ms. Kate Muth executive director of the international mailers advisory group a US based trade association that represents international mailers and shippers which has been a member of the CC since 2004 and I think we've all seen the IMAG placard up in the balcony I know that you've been attentively watching the proceedings over the last few days so Kate the floor is yours can you just give us any parenthetical comments you have at the beginning a personal point and just what you want to get out of this and floor is yours well thank you Raj thank you Nermeen and thank you for the invitation I would say I will be short but as you can see that's not true I've been told I should say I will be brief so for those online I'm tall so I just wanted to highlight here that as you can see we're 45 IMAG is a US trade association US based trade association we represent primarily international mailers and shippers of course with at least some presence in the United States not all of them are headquartered there I think you can see that they are partners to the postal operators they are suppliers and vendors they are your customers serving the shared customer and of course they are competitors at times and we are a very unique association because our members are often competitors to each other but they're partners to each other as well and the whole goal is to remove the barriers to the efficient movement of goods and information across border that's what we try to do we work together there's a little bit of strength in numbers if you asked something you know we've had some metaphors here I like to use sports metaphors I think using a boxing metaphor we're a small association but we punch above our weight we have a very visible international presence I just wanted to note that about a third of the members didn't even exist 15 years ago they weren't even companies so that tells you how fast and how dynamic the e-commerce industry is it's brought all of these new market entrants into the market to speak these are all most of the members are either consolidators, hardware, software solutions providers, they're platforms they're the marketplaces and they most of them take advantage at least in the United States some of them do inbound into the US as well but we take advantage of what's called work sharing which is when a mailer or a shipper does the sorting or the transportation or the distribution and gets a discounted rate from the postal service because we've taken some of the work away from them and what we have promoted as an association both through the expert team and just in our ongoing activities in the CC is this idea of international work sharing where we're trying to build volumes for the postal operators and yes there are times when we will use when the members will use a freight forwarder, we'll use one of the integrators they'll use direct injection but the idea is to give and I heard Will reference this to give the customer as many options as possible and to give them the best possible service at the price that they want with the tracking that they want or don't want so it's the whole gamut of options because the customer ultimately for our members they also take on the customer service part for the postal service when they're work sharing they're the ones who get the customers complaints and calls so I was asked to kind of give an example of of how we partner and there's a handful of ways well in fact there's a number of ways but I'm going to just share a handful some of these members are quite literally what we call well they're postal qualified wholesalers they quite literally sell the postal services products and services we have the three we have the three PC postage providers so they are selling postage we have a number of companies that add value to the products that all of you provide and they serve your customers by adding value we have duty and tax collector software solutions we have labeling solutions and all of it is to improve interoperability to integrate I just want to tell a couple of other things that we have done we have a member that during the pandemic provided transport into Europe for a designated operator when a number of the flights went down and this was the only way they could get the mail into certain European countries one of my members provided that transport but they didn't have UPU documentation they couldn't enter it didn't have an IMPC code and didn't have UPU documentation so things kind of got held up when it reached the destination destination designated operator have a member that participated airlift to Latin America from the United States had a member that certified to be an ocean carrier to keep mail moving and goods moving during the pandemic that's quite an undertaking to be certified through the Federal Maritime Commission and Customs and Border Protection have other members that also in their own countries became ocean carriers to keep mail and goods moving so these are some of the ways where we are already partnering with designated operators and of course with the integrators as well again to give customers as many options as possible we have been an active participant IMAG has been in the expert group in the expert team we've offered comments and suggestions both in written and we participated on the calls and we are among the proponents for some kind of an integrated service product or service because some of the products and service are quite good perhaps on their own but they are actually their true value is derived from being interconnected with other products and services so we did promote some of those ideas and one of the things I mentioned last week in Frankfurt at the World Leaders Forum is that a lot of the private sector doesn't even know much about what the Postal Technology Center does they are producing some really quality products but it's just not very well known and one of the things that one of the things that the private sector can do is to essentially help you market and sell those products and services to reach a wider audience I'm kind of jumping around here because I wanted to respond to everything Vincenzo said and if I did that I would be here for another 20 minutes to dispute a number of the things he mentioned but I don't want to do that I want to kind of stay on track with where there are some real possibilities for us to continue to work together going forward we have some ideas around what products and services might be worthwhile for what I am going to promote and suggest today which it would be some market tests and the concept being very similar to what would be in the private sector you stand up a couple of services or products for a year or two a year you market test you gather the data and perhaps I heard some of this reference to how do we model some of this for individual countries we run market tests and we see what works after a year or two years the agreements between the designated operators and the private sector or the private companies if something isn't working alright you kill it or you tweak it you revise it if it's working well we scale it up and offer it more widely I have a couple of few ideas actually on what those well how do we get to a market test well that's another idea that I was thinking about and talking with the members so what if we use the existing expert team but we create a much smaller agile and nimble group within that like a small working group that wants to be part of a market test so if you're a designated operator or a government that wants to consider a market test with a private sector partner you would be part of this working group but perhaps we don't want the designated operators that only want to come into a working group to kill every idea I mean I think it really has to be something where we are moving the ball forward because a lot of the early slides were showing that we've been talking about this for 30 20 or 30 years started my career as a trade reporter I covered the postal service the business of mailing and the UPU and you know I've been doing this 25 years we have been talking about this for 25 years so one idea is to just create some market tests and move the ball forward and then the last thing I will do is suggest a couple of ideas for some market tests one is is an express like commercial service where you would have a post perhaps that doesn't already have a commercial arm and I'm just going to use as an example going into the United States but let's say Japan post or India post and we have a private sector partner that's a platform and they're the ones that's going to help you get that express like service so you have, say you have a Japan post and they turn the manifest over to this platform or the solutions provider and they're providing, they're lining up the service, they're lining up the transport they're taking care of the whatever piece of it that you need taken care of the customs, clearance, the duties and taxes and they're direct injection into the United States and they're deciding on the, you know based on what service you want or what price you want this software solution, this platform can help decide what the last mile delivery provider should be and then we decide, okay well what UPU products and services do we want to lay on top of this, you know kind of I've heard Walter describe it as the UPU platform is the iPhone and we're putting all the apps on top so do we want to use Oscar to measure carbon emissions, are there some track and trace products that the UPU has that would be good for this market test, you know we can layer in whatever we want, the payment system but it would be at commercial rates, we're not asking for market, you know we do market rates, we're not asking for for the remuneration I almost feel like that's something we could take right off the table from our perspective so that's one idea and then referring back to what I had mentioned about the member who was moving was helping a post to move mail into Europe during the height of the pandemic what if we allowed UPU documentation just so that the commercial partner and the post are speaking the same language, they're singing from the same song sheet so to speak so that might be another market test and then finally you know if we did want to look at maybe one or two stand alone the addressing solutions are very intriguing, there is obviously it benefits everyone the commercial provider the post, the sender and the recipient if the address is correct and clean and correct I forget what the three C's are current, clean and correct but at the moment those tools are a little bit cumbersome I was looking at what you have to do documentation and the guide and the exceptions in this country it's like filling out a tax return frankly except for apparently in Estonia I heard Estonia people fill out their taxes in a half hour or something but it's like filling out lengthy forms where it's very cumbersome and you're just going to walk away from doing it so maybe there's a chance to partner there where our members any number of these solutions providers on here could add the right bells and whistles could customize it for different customers and make it have a value that's very appealing to a wider array of customers so with that those are my ideas and suggestions and I welcome any further discussion during the questions, thank you thank you very much Kate, that was great I'll turn the floor over now to Nidmin to get our last presenter on deck and then we can get into it thank you Raj now we go to our next panelist Mr. Keith Kelsen please welcome with me Mr. Keith hello sir, welcome to UPU and our conference and allow me to introduce to make brief introduction for you Mr. Keith is an accountant and a lawyer and he started his career as a tax attorney focusing on international trackering operations and later led a team responsible for business development in Asia, China and India and joined the mail industry in 1990s as the chief financial officer and general council of mailing company which was one of the first work share partners with United States Postal Service, welcome Mr. Keith first we'd like you to make a brief introduction about yourself to know you more and then go to your presentation well first I'd like to thank everybody for the opportunity to present today the IB, the council of administration general operations, council line humbled and grateful for being able to exchange ideas today from outside the tent inside the tent there's still ideas and I'd like to exchange those as candidly as we can good bad and indifferent so don't be afraid to send some tough questions I'd fine with that that said personal points number one I've been doing international for many many many years within the mail industry or outside my ninth birthday I was in Russia first time in China was 1979 and so I'd like to think that it enables me at least a little bit to understand from looking across the aisle and understanding through different eyes and different perspectives which is what I'm trying to do in this case and for many years for my career the other point personal is I have three triplet 20 year old girls who taught me to be humble and broke and they enabled me to have a passion for this world and I think I'd like to leave a little better off for them than I was given so that aside from a successful perspective here exchange of information is that simple make sure that people understand a lot of things that I've seen just in the last few days I think are unnecessary disagreements there just we need to get the information out there to what we're looking for where we think we can provide benefits and then exchange of course where the concerns are and how we can address those concerns and I'm an operator by nature I'm conflicted because I'm a lawyer and accountant and operator so that just makes me something a mess but that said I oversimplify things I think that sometimes we can over complicate things that can be quite simple as a whole now the details get messy sometimes but the concepts don't have to be that's what I want to exchange today so that said there's a label if you will please this is Vincenzo said the light bulb inspiration this is my inspiration now that is really sad right? either I've been in postal too often I'm not a techie so what's wrong with this why does this inspire me this label here the reason this inspires me is this label here enables for the two of the largest supply chain networks in the world to exchange packages every day and leverage each other it allows UPS to exchange millions of packages a day and deliver them to the United States Postal Service every day so they can do last mile delivery to residences in the United States I'll get into more details on that a little bit more but labels just like this from several other companies enable the United States Postal Service to deliver 3.5 billion packages last year for the private sector 3.5 billion 10 million packages a day right now are flowing through the United States Postal Service network every day because of labels like this voluntarily where the Postal Service is being paid what they think they should get paid we are paying it willingly and our customers are receiving a shared experience of benefits e-commerce that's why this inspires me to cut through the chase and I'll get into a little bit more detail here that same label in a simplified version I think can enable the United UPU to do the same thing with the last country mile being the last mile from an international basis rather than the USPS being paid a market rate to deliver something within a geo of the United States a foreign post is paid a market rate to deliver a package voluntarily in its country of origin that's a very high level we'll get into more details here but voluntary market rates those are the themes I want to push on here before we get too much into the details though a little background I entered the mailing industry 25 years ago I was mentioned earlier the mailing company was purchased by UPS but we were one of the first Workshare programs of the U.S. Pulsa Service Workshare, Kate outlined it that's where the public works with the private sector and the public sector of the Pulsa Service to try and create to use the strengths of our networks to work together to provide a better customer solution using each of our strengths when I was at RMX we had the Workshare program again we were dropshipping to the United States Pulsa Service 100% of our volume for them to deliver packages on our behalf because they're there and we weren't United States UPS mail innovation still exists, I ran it for a few years we were acquired by UPS in 2001 and then I helped negotiate the first Workshare agreement the first NSA with UPS the United States Pulsa Service and when I went to one of my senior leaders at the United UPS in 2001 and I said someday it may be possible for the Pulsa Service to deliver a package he said don't say that again or I'll get fired go figure we have it on both sides I worked extensively with Jim Cochran with the USPS many years ago we discussed many times where they were getting obstacles all over the place fear of the unknown, fear of change fear of what are they going to do to us but slow but sure it caught on and that program where again the Pulsa Service delivers for UPS and many others, not just UPS has been the fastest growing parcel delivery program for the United States Pulsa Service for the last 20 years so it has been done and obstacles internal, external exist yes people are afraid I'll go through more details I'm sure as the dialogue unfolds this afternoon but it can be done and I think from a UPS perspective it should be done, I think from a UPS perspective it would be helpful to be done as well I think it helps us all if we do it right and that's the key that the UPS room has the ability to do it right we'll get into more details later on that said if UPU can be a facilitator of the last mile now UPS already delivers to 220 countries and territories every day 192 of which are represented in this room we are either using Pulse which we do a lot most people don't know that I can't publicize it but if you don't think we're leveraging Pulse and a lot of geos you're crazy, they're already there so we're already doing this but I don't have a centralized platform so 192 agreements, really? 192 barcodes? No, no that's not an efficient way to do it to have the ability to deliver through the UPU at a market rate and that puts control in your hands the rates are yours we don't want the terminal dues but maybe say that twice, I'll say it three times because I've heard it already 50 times the terminal dues, the USO we've got to do the USO we're not asking to force a Pulse to do anything we're asking for any Pulse in this room to say I can deliver this package in this country to a competitor of yours and pay them a market rate or I can deliver it to the Pulse and pay you a market rate it's up to you if you don't want to do it, don't if you do it the first time and don't like it, back out but at the same time you have a chance to deliver things at a market rate that hopefully cover your costs now I'll caution you the prices have to be competitive because we're already delivered to someone and we can't lose too much money doing it I'd like to give a Pulse off in frankly I think that you have infrastructure, USO virtue of the UPU and a Pulse behind it give the Pulse the first opportunity but you have to deliver and that's okay, everybody wants that chance to deliver so that's my perspective at a very high level I do not want to sit there and govern the UPU I don't want to take over the UPU I've got enough governmental issues in DC right now I don't need to do more of those here the fact of the matter is though we want to contribute as a partner working together to go forward so the operator at heart again oversimplifies things there are a lot of concerns here I welcome those concerns bring them on, let's hear them in an open form so we can address them and go forward, to me it's as simple as that putting it together a little complicated because you have 192 of those I got it, I got it and again I'm oversimplifying things but if you have the ability and this involves some of Kate's customers involves some of Kate's member companies because they have ancillary services that will be plus, minus or indifferent to that or whatever the Pulse need as well so there are obviously some challenges at the same time though to me it makes sense, number one to whiteboard us so we can give her the misinformation let's figure out what everybody wants in this room if it's concerned about terminal dues and requiring a Pulse to deliver things if somebody may lose costs that's gone, that never was I presented a year ago, a year and a half ago I asked for market rates way back then so a lot of those debates end right there universal service obligation, let's talk about it it's important, I'm the first to agree with it but I'd like to think that this program helps fund the USO by giving packages to Pulse at market rates so they can leverage their infrastructure and deliver something and make a little bit of money to help pay for the USO rather than take away from it so I'll leave it at that I thank you very much for your time and again I thank you for your time today thank you so much Mr. Kies for this practical straightforward and open presentation actually I have public questions for you and also for Kies it has been active, it has been lively but in focus and we have practical issues you just speak about and also we have issues and concerns related to it so we're looking forward, I believe it will be for the second session if we don't have time to open the floor now or we can, we can couple questions, okay so we still have 15 minutes ahead of us okay, so the floor is open for questions and even take the questions now and we can receive the responses maybe in the next session so Raj if I may the floor is open can we go to our colleague from Malaysia yeah thank you Raj thank you for giving Malaysia floor like, we like Australia the flower presentation I think perhaps IB can adopt or adapt that presentation for the congress I think that is something that that we don't need to reinvent I think a lot of who has been done by Australia, I think it's something very useful to our works and we also very impressed with our wider stakeholders, if I can say in the United States in particular on work sharing has been done for many many years in the United States and it shows that partnership have created a lot of prosperity for all players when you compete as well as you cooperate, I think this is something, the model that we can think globally and UPU could be the centre of platform for last month delivery as our friends from UPS is suggesting I think the model is there is something that we need to find ways how can we do it right thank you very much you have floor thank you Raj, thank you Nermin for giving me the floor introducing myself in few words, I'm Radu Moldavan and I have been working in the regulatory in Romania, ANCOM for 20 years currently leading the poster regulation unit inside it for beginning I want to emphasise that I am related to participate in this event and I consider that the discussions and resolutions of the Abidjan Congress last year together with the activity of the POC and CA experts in the organisation of this conference as a forum for debating not only involving the expression of official position of the member states but also the personal opinions of the present representatives are actually a big step forward in the unions activity catalyzing process for future regarding the portfolios of services accessed by poster services provider providers other than the universal service providers in member states we all know that they are interested in providing services outside the universal service in many less developed countries or in developing countries concentrating their activity in the urban environment mostly because of a lack of infrastructure I want to correlate this fact with the conclusion drawn following a question from the questioner developing connection with this subject should the wider members have a role in the decision making process of the UPU from the answer we received to this it follows that 23% of the respondents are of the opinion that future members should not be involved in the decision making process interesting most negative answers came from the world's regions with many less developed or developing countries in my opinion this fact should raise a key question also in close connection with some details from Vincenzo's presentation what are these suppliers afraid of why don't they trust in a future of together do not be universal service suppliers in the respective states seeing in the opening of UPU some future competition challenges in the very specific postal services in which they operate in my opinion the opening should produce for future the really single global market for postal services and lead to the really interconnection of regional postal networks from all over the world I leave the question open considering that in the perspective of next year extraordinary congress better communication is needed between UPU and the respondents of that 23 of negative answers received to the mentioned question to conclude I thank all the panelists in the first two panels of the day for the great presentations they made thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to speak and I wish everyone in attendance a great day ahead, thank you okay I believe we have noticed someone before the lady from Kazakhstan and you said Uniglobe was looking for the floor right after Romania so we can go to Uniglobe and then thank you can I begin good afternoon to all and thank you to all of the panelists for their presentations it was indeed very very interesting we represent some 2.5 million workers throughout the world and my question or my intervention rather follows up on that of the intervention from Australia you mentioned that we need a level playing field between DO's and actors in the wider postal sector and for that to be the case the products and services of the UPU could allow for the establishment of such linkages and that we need a plan for that a plan that leaves no one behind and that plan that leaves no one behind you spoke about the designated operators you spoke about the wider postal sector operators and citizens and I should mention that it is important that we do not leave the workers behind either they every day day to day do the work and have allowed us at these times of crisis to maintain our links and communication so how can we also ensure in that that workers are included thank you our colleague from Kazakhstan and thank you dear colleagues first of all I would like to thank all of these speakers for the extremely comprehensive material that they presented to us and I would like to draw my colleagues attention to the following point as we know membership of the UPU means that we have certain obligations and I would like to clarify when opening the UPU to WPSPs and these new participants will they have rights and will we be putting some obligations on them so what do I actually mean by this well the obligations generally these obligations lie on on DOs so when we include the private sector will we will we mean will we give these obligations to them as well and there may be risks in providing these services for the private sector and so we need to really think about this relation between the DOs and the private sector that was the first point and so we really need to think about social responsibility as well that we ask of our workers for example in our company we have a certain number of workers and we have to think about the reduction in we have to think about these social consequences on their work, thank you very much thank you for your question now you have the floor thank you for giving Tunisia the floor madam the chair give me an opportunity to put this away my name is Mona I represent here the government of communication technologies that's why you can here judge that I'm holding positions as strategy maker and regulator of the market in Tunisia so from a government perspective inviting stakeholders to contribute to the achievement of the United Nations sustainable goals sustainability goals is really in the heart of our mission for that our government has prepared a national digital plan taken into consideration many models of collaboration among which is private public partnership and why not even plans for encouraging really private investment but at the same time as government maintaining the sustainability of the designated operator is still a priority as designated operator in Tunisia is the provider of the universal service and not only that but also a major player in the implementation of a government strategy aware about the challenges I think deciding about the issue of opening up should be dealt with based on a very cautious approach I concluded from the interventions of all the panelists and the participants that we are dealing with the issue from different positions regulator government operator different economic and regulatory models different also level of development of the sector so as we are already following the recent output of the task force also we notice that there are three baskets for example of products but does that really serve the implementation of the decision to gradually open up I don't think so I think that it rather makes it more complicated and harder to implement why because for the simple reason I already mentioned that we are discussing the issue from different positions from different economic models from different level of development that based on such conclusion I may hear all the audience the panelists and participants whether it is possible or not to build on previous gradual approaches in general and why not the implementation of the remuneration system in UPU which proved also its feasibility although it needs review but it proved feasibility so many models of gradual opening up may be suggested enough which I may suggest the following invite UPU to play a regulatory role in this issue to put the game rules in a way that takes into consideration the difficulties that may face designated operators to elaborate an action plan based on a step-by-step approach a step-by-step approach should be combined based on geographic consideration type of services timeline so on a step-by-step approach should be based on prioritizing the solution ready for opening up considering a timeline schedule and considering also readiness of the region's regulation to adopt an opening up decision the timeline will allow sorry I suggested this because I'm noticing that from region to another readiness for opening up differs based on the maturity of the economic model and the regulatory framework the timeline will allow countries to learn from the experiences of those who started first and the UPU may then amend the game rules and UPU is the authority at the end of regulation at the international level this is not a new role I think in such approach may come for those who still hesitate and who have always the need for an impact study long time ago and as our panelist from Australia already said we need a plan that does not really leave anyone behind thank you so much okay thank you Tunisia so now we've had comments from Malaysia Romania, Uniglobe Kazakhstan and Tunisia now oh no I'll come to you I'll come to you Bail but there's been a number of comments and questions that have been made so I'd like to Keith and Kate in no particular order but for our guests coming from UPS and IMeg I'd like to ask you do you have any comments or remarks concerning the remarks that have come from the floor and then when you've had a chance had a shot at providing some comments or responses I'll turn for a brief comment for our colleagues here who are also representing member countries so Keith and Kate well first of all I need to make sure that I say this because I forgot to say it earlier this is UPS it's not the Global Special Association so Carlos recovered there anyway I'd like to start with a story and this is a real life factual story and it's happened several times and this will address I think the core of many of your questions I'm sure they're in this room I don't know if I see them or not and they were in a reasonably sized developing country you know they were one of the more developed developing countries they wanted an e-commerce solution so they wanted us to sit there and help facilitate it because they were being undermined by one of our competitors in their country that were already there may or may not be in this room and we tried to work together to give it to them they already had the platform they'd already done all IT work which you can see I'm not so good at and we thought we could help them because we thought they had enough volume well sure enough we get into the details and prices were okay but then it came to the transportation infrastructure how did you get the ULD into that country trying to do it once every day not didn't work once a week still didn't work once a week from three countries over that worked but you didn't have the volume and the prices weren't there because you can't sit there and sustain losses while they try and gain market share when they only have a limited package within their network ultimately they fell apart they were disappointed in us because we tried to do something we couldn't give them and now do you think that helped the USO at the end of the day the post is still by itself competing with a competitor that's more efficient in the market or whatever I don't know the dynamics all I know is they were not happy with the situation so they're competing alone it didn't help their employment situation it didn't help fund their USO because they were still the same roadblock they had before they met us they had after they met us and we couldn't help them now fast forward you have an existing platform right now that already has goods going back and forth maybe fast maybe not fast don't know but it's there you already had an IT infrastructure they had in place you have the ability if we're going to ask you to deliver packages just ask not require voluntary don't want to do it don't do it to deliver packages to market rate I imagine we do the same figure something out to where that enables the density building for developing countries to sit there and start to get volume now so they can build that ULD otherwise right now they're sitting there trying to find a solution that it's hard because you have to start somewhere and this enables a connectivity between the organizations to start somewhere and I don't know how it all works I don't know if we use what communication or what transportation or whatever and you wipe over and you go through it and you start to use existing infrastructure right now to build the densities necessary for developing countries to start to make a bigger outreach and a bigger presence this is an enabler working together rather than not that takes care of the employment to a certain extent to the extent we're able that takes care of the universal service obligation to a certain extent and I'd like to leave it with this one we've been told this many times and sometimes they mean it sometimes they don't but fail fast kind of kicked for failing at all but at the same time this is in the hands of the people in this room if it's not going in the direction you don't want and that's why governance issues got it don't overdo it you got a barcode you have an opportunity for a willing country to take a package and be paid a market rate to take a package if you don't want to take it don't if it's not going well stop there's nothing that says this has to go on forever if it's not going to weigh people in this room want it and so I think it answers a lot of the questions raised here and the concerns because yeah there are a lot of concerns that have to be thought out here but I'd like to think paying a package or paying a post a market rate to deliver a package helps the employment helps the USO and achieves the ability for longer term supply chains to expand in developing countries the post that needed the most thank you thanks Keith just a couple of brief notes the gentleman from Malaysia referred I called it international work sharing you called it global work sharing I think it's a better term so I'm going to start using that because the model is there and I wanted to just toss it back on the work sharing and I'm sorry to be so US centric but it's the post I know the best studies and I'm sure this one's dated and Jim or Allison can probably maybe know a more recent number but work sharing saved the postal service $14 billion this was a 2004 study and the US economy $1 billion that's money they can now put into capital investment that's money that they don't have to raise prices on their products and services keeps them competitive keeps more postal employees you know keeps you from having to reduce your staff and those kinds of things so that opportunity I think it is a good model and I just want to maybe put back to the to those of you in the audience here countries and the designated operators is there an interest in market testing some of these products and services are their ideas to do what Keith is saying and some of the some of the suggestions and there are individual companies here who can offer better ideas on products that we can market test over a year or two years or however you get a group in a room and I just and we move forward so we're actually when we go to the extraordinary congress we're either ready to go with the test or maybe you know maybe we've already launched something so I just is there an appetite to take a bite from the apple and start because to me that is a step by step process we've already done the talking step let's do let's do a concrete step and move the ball forward thank you thank you Catherine and thank you Keith please stay with us for the next session because I myself have a lot of questions for you about the models both you suggested and we have connoisseurs not from our sites from the regulation sites for customs etc so what they accept from CN38 and to tell you more about our logistics and operation will never be accepted for cargo it's not by us it's by the customs authorities and even for the pie everyone want to take a part of the pie but speaking here because part of the work I'm speaking openly because I want to tell you tell me how we can address this together as our dear friend said profit making area I can take part of the pie as a rural area and not be profiting and then UPS you can send mail to UPS at Cairo but not send it at the new valley so I will be harmed I will never be this is a concern that we have as DO's so please be prepared to answer this for the next session because we want this is openly we said openly this is what we have so let us explore and see what you can address because there is monopolistic practices there is profit industry areas everyone is focusing on it and this is universal service obligations and the rural areas that we are suffering to serve so please stay with us for the next questions and Raj you have this is going to be an awesome afternoon session because I'm going to have to turn to you as a coach here to give you the floor as a question asker so that's all fun listen in the interest of time we've got 10 minutes we're extending the session by 15 minutes we're 5 minutes into it the gentleman from Ghana now Bile I know you want to take the floor and I know you're an eloquent guy so maybe you can close us out unless you have a fast question and for Will and Vincenzo if you have any comments on the questions and remarks that have been made from the floor can you hold it to 30 seconds can you do it we want to get the floor get the mic back into the hands of those folks okay so Will and Vincenzo let's go 30 seconds okay I think time's up just kidding Keith and Kate well answered the question from the audience but again I have two remarks to you okay first to Keith I mean I understand that it's in your behavior act as cherry picking when you say I don't want remuneration I don't want USO postal operators cannot choose to not adding remuneration not adding USO so we want to create level playing field or we want to be disaligned in cooperation okay to Kate Kate is stressing the concept of having a test I think I was quite eloquent describing that there are some features also Nermin now was a lighting related to how it's very difficult to regulate a market when many stakeholders are playing all together and check whether is correctly flow or address to stakeholders with respect to rural areas and metropolitan to say profitable and not profitable area we have to check that we cannot make a test if you want to make a test you bring volumes put in the network and deliver then you have a test but it's the reality which will give us the result of this operation which cannot be seen by a test I'm sorry just over to Mike and you know what stick around the afternoon session we can really explore this make them absolutely I'm going to take 60 seconds but I will be very brief thank you Malaysia I think your comments absolutely align with where we need to go so thank you to our colleague from Romania I also agree about that question around a global single market and how can we facilitate better communication between all of the stakeholders that are on this podium today and with everyone else to our colleague from Uniglob I could only agree more we need to ensure that we don't leave our workers behind you're absolutely right in terms of the work that they've done over the COVID period and for decades before that and I think the worker question is a question that governments around the world are grappling with and I think it's a question that the UPU can help out on to our colleague from Kazakhstan the question around why the wider postal sector player rights and obligations and their relations I would say the answer is as governments we choose whether the wider postal sector have rights or obligations in our countries I would argue that that is not something the UPU regulates to a large extent it is an obligation that fits on member countries themselves and what they do domestically if I want to make Keith a DO I can do that tomorrow if I want to say Keith please deliver to Uluru and that's a condition of working in Australia I can do that I think it's not a question for the UPU I think it's a question for the UPU how we facilitate connectivity between the operators that our various countries have agreed to allow to operate in our countries I think that picks up on a bit that our colleague from Tunisia also raised I would only agree that it's important from a government perspective to deliver on the sustainable development goals and I think to deliver on the sustainable development goals we need to ensure that we have a sustainable market that delivers on it I totally agree in terms of an action plan I totally agree in terms of prioritising and achieving a timeline I think the question of geography is an interesting challenge for me in Australia we have 24 million people but 80% of them live in five cities and the rest live in a geographic land space the size of the United States so we have this problem of geography as well I know we're developed, I know others are developing but I would just say I think again the UPU's role is between countries and it's a question for countries how we can deliver on that and I talked in my remarks around social development and I think it's a really important pillar to help countries that need it actually lift themselves up and lift those standards so that everyone of our citizens gets the same level of service I think I've ticked everyone off but thank you Raj for the time Thanks Will, if you could pass the mic over that's great and you know what in Canada we have a very similar situation with regards to our universal service obligation where the majority of our population lives within 100km of the US border but we still have a universal service obligation to the north and to the Arctic and all that Nermin, you want to colleagues from Ghana, yes we have the floor to ask questions but we'll be answered in the next session first we'd like to thank the interpreters for being with us, we're almost there Thank you very much Naomi and Raj for this opportunity to contribute to this very very important conversation that's going on I also want to thank Keith your presentations were great it's changed my perception I had on this entire opening up so I think it was a great presentation now what I see evident is some form of collaboration is necessary I mean that's a fact and that's something we can all not run away from I'll share in your presentation in Ghana for instance during the COVID one of the USPS was our reliever, you know the relationship where they gave us some good rates and through them we could ship to Europe, to the US and a couple of places so yes already there is some collaboration that's ongoing but what I think we need to also mention is there's a clear difference between the WPSPs who have some affiliation with UPU and some wider postal sector operators who have no relationship with the UPU and in our place so for instance Ghana and Nigeria I can use these two countries as examples we have some wider postal service operators operating who have no relationship, no affiliation to the UPU and they are killing us they are killing us I mean to some of them they actually receive items destined for post office boxes because they don't have any relationship with the post they end up finding ways to deliver these items and it becomes a very cumbersome process and so I'm happy the UPU is considering this conversation and the fact that we have some USPSPS who are some income related to the post related to the UPU there will be a certain level playing ground for some conversations that will proceed into the future but I have some few questions for IMAG for instance you listed a couple of members which include the DHL e-commerce USPS Global Business FedEx cross border for instance these ones I want to know whether they are the same as the courier companies that are operating out there so for the FedEx for instance Ghana we have FedEx DHL I want to know whether these are some specific winks or they are just the same companies that do operate now this is what I want to propose and I believe as the conversations go on we will definitely have all these things discussed but I think the UPU in going forward really need to come up with some really tight regulations that would ensure the reciprocity that my brother from Italy was talking about is achieved because on one hand we also do need some form of collaboration from these USPS but on another hand we also have a certain service to provide so if there is a middle ground and I think UPU will be that perfect middle ground to help and aid with the negotiation so that everybody is covered especially if we are able to do this and we will go a long way into expanding the life of some deals because if we don't do this some designated operators are gradually dying especially with our loss on the other hand especially on the financial services front and other areas we really need this conversation to continue and see it thank you thank you dear colleague now we came to the end of our session and please thank you so much for coming for expanding the session 15 minutes we will be back for the third part led by our dear colleague Stuart and Samir so please come again at 2030 to listen to all our panellists about all this and how to work and to make the opening successful for post-party thank you so much and I wish you thank you very much