 hosted by the by the UPU International Bureau on the topic of regulatory responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. And my name is Bruno Basilisco. I'm a director of Copenhagen Economics. I'm pleased with the opportunity to support as a moderator this very expert panel that we have today on the topic of quality of service tensions ahead. Today, we're joined by two distinguished experts bringing forward a regulators perspective and a designated operators perspective. And as a first contribution today, we will have Jochen Levin from the Swedish BTS Post and Telecom Authority who has served over his distinguished career as economist, as expert advisor in regulation and also as a responsibility with the as appointed expert in the with the Ministry of Infrastructure in Sweden in the official government inquiry on the financing of the Universal Postal Service. Jochen is a PhD from the Stockholm School of Economics where he has also served as lecturer and researcher. Jochen, the floor is yours. We welcome your your insights to kick off the conversation today on this topic and then to join the panel in the in the broader conversation later on. Thank you for joining us today. A real pleasure. Over to you. Thank you very much Bruno. It's a pleasure to be here and we are going to take some look from the Swedish perspective what we have seen. Perhaps we have a bit you have some quite specific situation I would say. So if perhaps not so generalizable to all other countries but we will start from that. We can take next slide. Well, when it comes to the general quality of the Postal Service during the pandemic, it was surprisingly quite unaffected during the pandemic year. Our main quality target for priority letter mail which is measured on that it should be by the receiver in two days. 95 percent should be delivered in that time and the target actually increased a bit to over 98 percent the result increased a bit to 98 percent and that was perhaps quite surprising but it also shows that the general postal system worked very well in Sweden in this case and one reason may of course be that we did not have a total lockdown so major societal functions were working quite well during the time but of course high numbers of sick absence and so on on personnel did of course cause problems but mostly on very local delivery offices and so on. When it comes to the Postal the Post offices or in most cases in Sweden they are run by third parties. They had a very high level of keeping it on the normal service. There were a few that had temporarily produced opening hours and the numbers that were closed were very few just I think there were under one percent of all these service points were affected at any point in time so that was a good result but of course there were some personnel issues but what we saw that we had of course intense communications with the operator but they had a very fast adaptation of hiring extra personnel to put in and those affected local postal deliver offices so they could in fact cope with it quite well. However as I guess almost every country we saw quite substantive effects on cross-border mail both the possibility to send out to quite different number of countries that we couldn't send out to and also delays on incoming cross-border mail but that is of course a very important thing to discuss in this type of context that we are today within the UPU because it's hard for a single regulator to solve the problems of the overall international global postal system. We can go on to the next slide. The pandemic had quite a dramatic effect on the market however the effect on letter mail was record high and decrease almost 12 percent down in volumes however as you see from the graphics they were quite large the preceding year so we have a very high level of digitalization going on right now in sweden so what actually is the effect from the pandemic on the letter with volumes are quite hard to isolate however the important thing is the change in consumer behavior I think even though we had a decrease in volumes of 12 percent on letters there was only a very slight decrease in revenues and that counts because the small packets segment had a very large increase during the pandemic many people's really worked on with buying things through e-commerce channels and that had a major impact on the financial outcome of the operators. Next slide please and what we see is that the pandemic has really speedened up the shift from letter mail as the most important thing in postal business to the parcel and delivery of goods and we see domestically we had 58 percent of revenues coming from parcels and small packets and e-commerce boom was yeah it was really high we had a total increase of 40 percent during 2020 and we also see that the e-commerce has a really important part of the postal business 70 percent of the parcels if we include the small packets or originated from e-commerce so that is a very important observation I would say next slide please so how does this affect how we should look at things in the future well quality of service quality of service measures well at least in Europe I would say what we've been very focused on measuring the letter mail segment where we have different types of targets and they have not been so well developed in the parcel segment so should this market shift that we really see happening after the pandemic also reflect how we perform perform the quality of service measurements yeah I think that could be a way to go and that has also been identified as an important thing in the european regulatory group for postal services the ERGP that has a work stream on that for next year feasibility study of quality of service indicators for the parcel market so that is quite timely I think one thing that is also quite clear that is that consumers at least when they buy things domestically through e-commerce almost all the different operators have different types of tracking applications that you can have in your mobile phone and so on so that you can follow actually your ordered parcels and small packets so that the transparency for the consumer are already quite good so you have to have that in mind when you think of if you're going to impose some specific quality of service targets or something like that on also on the parcel side of the market and also of course how do we deal with the implications for cross border service that I don't have so much to say on but I just want to put that question to the audience really thank you very much thank you Joachim for kicking off the discussion with this interesting evidence and your initial interpretation I'm sure you have more comments and insights and thanks for leaving a little bit for later for the discussion for the audience I would now like and it's my pleasure to give the floor to Hans Blipman Hans is from the Dutch designated operator Postenel he has a distinguished career there his academic starting point is of education in planning economics and law I cannot think of anything better for this topic and many of the responsibilities that you have held Hans has been he is now a public affairs advisor so he has the opportunity to to be the counterpart to the regulatory authority on this the CA is also convener on CEN on customers product and services with responsibility including all of regulations like EN 1T850 and he's also chairman of the central works council with Postenel so many different functions that help connect and inform your experience you've served as a product developer as quality of service manager and management of mail operation so we will really benefit from your insights today on this topic the floor is yours Hans thanks for your initial remarks now and for the broader input in the panel over to you thank you thank you Bruno for giving me the floor I'll try to share my screen oh I cannot I cannot we can see we can see the uh slide so I think maybe it is the colleagues from uh if you I guess we have the next slides next slide coming up okay well I try to give you some insights about the situation of the pandemic in the Netherlands and the first thing I think this was said about Sweden as well that we had a lot of difficulties of course but also we could have an uninterrupted service provision during the pandemic domestically but also internationally which might give reason for an interesting discussion afterwards because we changed to for export we changed to great flights and I think that was quite successful as of the markets the same as in Sweden applies in the Netherlands we had a spectacular growth of e-commerce in the parcel part it was up to 35 percent in the mail we had a different story uh accelerated volume decline of building volumes but we had an increase in greeting cards so consumer to consumers where worse was up to eight percent but overall we were down and let them in volume seven point two percent I must say that it was very despite it being a very difficult period for everybody in the country our employees got a lot of appreciation from public that was really you see in Dutch where you see the hearts etc so I think it's and I experienced myself as I also delivered mail and parcels during the period I experienced that myself as well next slide please we have three periods in the in the pandemic first we had uh quite a level of panic everything was quite new for everybody and we had a very high level of absence locally going up to 25 40 percent which is really disruptive and of course we had to adjust the workplace to the 1.5 meter workplace and all kinds of measures where I come back to it later had to be implemented all of a sudden and of course this took time etc here you see in the in the in the photo it's on parcel processing you see a coughing screen between the workers then we had a quite easy summer and then after the summer I think that was everywhere a difficult period second lockdown where locations of us according to the level of contamination were labeled orange or red and further restrictions and paring the working inside these buildings occurred and we had this inspection by health authorities some of which were disruptive as well for the process as well the third phase was a was a further lockdown and it you could say in short that Christmas visits the Christmas normal Christmas was suspended and people started to send each other enormously much more cards than than than than the experience and this also because it's very difficult to handle was disruptive in the process next slide please well what was then the effect on the quality of service first I have to say that the domestic target target in the postal law in the Netherlands is comparatively high it's 95 percent and it's on the overnight service so posted today delivered tomorrow which is different than in Sweden this this this is also the explanation why there was disruption on the system in the Netherlands because if you have to if you get the mail today you have to live tomorrow the maneuverability is quite limited the score not corrected for covid in 2020 was slightly below target 94.3 we had clear disruptions which are already mentioned but no grave interruptions of the general service network our slogan in that time was we go out so you can stay in on the right you see the measures it's the contactless delivery and the one and a half meter sanitation washing your hands etc next slide please this is the advertisement in the paper we had so we go out so you can stay in and I think it speaks for itself the mail delivery and the positive next slide please well now the regulatory part of my presentation of course this unique situation of the pandemic created this very very special situation in our relationship with the regulator so when when the situation broke out we immediately got into contact with each other and agreed to keep a log of incidents to see if there was a force mature situation but this was quite difficult to do actually because the pandemic had a more creeping effect so pinpointing exact incidents and saying well this day we couldn't deliver because of covid was quite hard to do but was clear that it's because of the absence because of the unusual mail flows etc that because of the impaired capacity and the impaired impaired maneuverability there were were effects there were some discussions with the accountant and we we got to the conclusion that well pinpointing and removing data from the survey with the approval of an accountant would not be easy and yet also there was a common understanding that the pandemic had negative effects especially on the D plus one service and that it was clearly beyond control personnel and therefore in some some form force measure next slide please well we continued our dialogue how to report how to report on this issue and we the conclusion was that personnel reported a non-corrected result non-corrected for covid impact that was the 94.3 percent and that we also produce an addendum to describe possible effects and these possible effects were calculated by the survey agency gfk the independent service agency in three scenarios first we saw some regional effects in the start phase maybe you know holland in the old days the south was more catholic the north more protestant and the south there is a big tradition of carnival and this was a super spreader effect super spreader occasion for the pandemic and there was been big panic in the south a lot of people got ill and then we saw total service in those regions plummeted to 88 percent and in the north where there was not this this event did not take place it was still 95 percent something like that then the two other scenarios which are regarded by by the regulator as more serious scenarios that was deleting incidents from the survey as recorded in the law so you take out certain certain test levels so to speak and the third deleting the weeks with the most profound covid-19 effects which came also which also were found in the law itself you can see what what the big picture and this led to if you if you take this into account then the quality of service level gets in the neighborhood of 95 percent well the assessment of the regulator currently is still pending so you have to wait what they think about this for next slide please i have made some extra slides and i would summarize this one because in in the pn 3850 the european norm on how to measure the quality of service there is a description of how to use force much here and how to deal with the regulator in this case however it's also clear that the exact pinpointing of the effect is quite difficult if if i look at the Netherlands you might you might know that half of the population lives below sea level so if if one of the dykes breaks then of course you can't deliver mail in certain areas in certain periods that's clear so you you take out these measurements in that period and that's for that area but even the fact that a pandemic has a more creeping effect it's it's it's quite difficult to use this exact approach and maybe we can discuss on that later on more so this is basically my basically my presentation so i'll give the word back to you thank you i think we've covered many interesting aspects that will help feed into the discussion in the in the broader panel broader focus of the panel now we have seen by combined views of these two presentations how the COVID-19 lockdowns and related restrictions those restrictions have increased the demand of some postal and delivery services decreased others and that you know this pressure has put postal operators you know making them operate at peak performance for several weeks also adapting to the new safety requirements and we've also seen and this was discussion in the last in the last webinar the incorporation of additional services that were necessary to support the pandemic response so i will keep this question as a follow-up question for for later on the the first question i would like to put to both panelists to share reflections on are about the nature of adaptation and first of all about the the processes to reach an understanding about what type of adaptation is needed in exceptional circumstances such as such as this one so perhaps i will give the the floor first back to Joachim and then Newhans thinking about your experience on your two different perspectives of course also two different countries and different pandemic situations and government approach and and and restriction approaches but what what what have you learned from the process of interacting with the counterpart you know so regulator with the designated operator and vice versa when a situation like this emerges what what have you have you learned from this Joachim yeah thank you Bruno i think one main lesson is that it is really important to quite rapidly work out some plan for communication that that you you Hans mentioned that they had this form of recording incidents and so on so there there must be established a designated people in the in the two in the regulator and in the in the operator that that's quite continuously can share information about the situation that and that worked quite well of course in the in the first few weeks or first month everybody was so it was quite well as Hans mentioned there were a bit of a panic but of course that that was the case also in Sweden because we were not really prepared to to all possible consequences well when it all started but when we started getting information be quite soon got more on top of the situation and so that the most things were working quite well thank you thank you Joachim over to you Hans the answer to the same question in in overall lessons learned from the interaction with your counterpart at the regulator yes first thing I would say in the beginning the concern was how to continue the service and that was also on the part of the regulator because everybody knew that we had people had to stay at home etc and that nationwide delivery might be very important for people to allow functioning at home in their work situation and whatever so that was the first thing first things first and furthermore I would like to support Mr. Levine said it's very important to have a dialogue because a pandemic situation like this last time was 1919 the Spanish flu nobody ever in the world has experienced a grave pandemic like this for a long time so you have to invent you have to invent your whole situation in you so to speak and our focus was on continuing the service while maintaining safety for the workers that everything was directed to death and I would say that still our dialogue of course is ongoing on this issue but I think it's very important to inform each other and to make people aware on every side of the of the defense so to speak what's happening and trying to figure out a way to deal with each other and then the uniqueness of the situation demands new answers to all questions one thank you thank you Hans one question I would like to put forward to follow up is on the specifics of you know the outcome of the dialogues and adaptation I think maybe I started to do Hans on this one I mean thinking about the regulators and the regulators and other government authorities adapted targets you know the fact or finds or other processes from not meeting targets to account for the unique situation I think you know you've hinted to some you know some of the process and some of the submissions you've made with that with the regulator do you know if this adaptation you know has been accepted or what what what to expect on on the the ability of the current rules and even the status and concept of force majeure but you know in general that the possibility for adaptation to actually work in a context like this one what can you say to that but difficult and then we are still in in waiting the assessment of the regulator the targets are in the law so the targets are the targets I know from other countries that some adjustments to the measurements were allowed so so but that's what I say in the Netherlands the discussion is still ongoing so I can't really comment on that but I I've heard from my counterparts that in some countries so not the targets were not set differently but there were some adaptations allowed in the survey which which is more or less what's also stated in the European norm that you in a force majeure shift situation you you can do that in in dialogue with the regulator Joachim could I ask you the similar question to you from your perspective what you've seen but also you've seen more broadly in the ERGP group what what can you share at this point yeah well in Sweden we of course thought about these things but we never really caught the situation where we had to make any adjustments of the of the existing regulation so so as it was working but but as Hans mentioned that I have also heard from my ERGP colleagues that the way to work with this is the force majeure concept and that has worked quite well as I have been told by my colleagues it is it has enough flexibility to cover this situation and that it was that's the main lesson I think about that one question I would like to tie into this is about thinking about the broader role of the post we've heard in the first webinar about the role of the post as a provider of essential services and and the the possibilities and opportunities for the post to find new activities related to supporting resilience supporting the existing and and and new citizen needs by various activities and and so this could take the form of additional services that were necessary to support the pandemic response maybe I start with you Hans do you to what extent has this been relevant in your in your case adjustments or additional services that you know were necessary to support the pandemic response and do these interfere in any way or or complement the existing services that are in scope for quality of service regulation does quality of service regulation get impacted in any way by this well actually I don't I don't think too much the main experience was of course the enormous increase in parcel e-commerce related services everybody was at home so it was easy to to get the parcels to to receive them of course some some adjustments had to be made to the way of delivery and the contactless delivery but essentially I think the services which were developed previously functions and they worked main thing I would say is that people had to rely more on e-commerce service to keep on working at home and and keep on functioning so they discovered more than in all the times how well e-commerce can work for them that's more a commercial effect and a more effect of habits I would say than actually doing something completely different in the service I don't know if that's not the answer you're looking for but no I think it is it is certainly relevant and also you know country by country the situation would be different in the type of activities in fact I was thinking of the parcel angle for a for a later question so I think we will we will connect to this soon one more thing maybe maybe more the deliveries to the home addresses especially in a pandemic yes yes and of course we've seen in recent years a lot of trend of consumers you know trading off and substituting delivering to the work address as a way to achieve the practicality and and in a sense or or or a puddle but you know in a way to in a sense increase the density in the delivery activity in a way that is convenient for the consumer as well so to both obtain a higher density drop density for the for the for the delivery but also to fit into the life the life of the consumer the question I wanted to to pass on to you Joaquin was related similarly here to first of all to what extent in discussions in in your country in Sweden have there been conversations about new roles new additional services that that the post can take and that can have a relevance a broader relevance to resilience to support to the type of you know state aims in in in you know both in terms of pandemic response and you know broader social social performance and also the upu has done a broad research on the role of a postal social services so that was the first question to you and again whether there were any overlaps in how the postal designated operator organizes itself and any impacts on regulation on the quality of service perspective thank you one thing that that came up was from a societal point of view really if the postal services could be used for sending these what's it called the when they test people if they had had the virus or not and that came up in the beginning of the pandemic I don't but I don't think however that the normal postal services could really cope with the time time demands for that services so they were more more turned over to express services those types of needs however another thing that that we have really seen is that uh several operators dealing with parcels or have had took the opportunity to roll out a new networks of parcel stations and they obviously had planned that even before the pandemic but and I think they speeded up that process a lot and several new entrants have received quite a lot of not a lot but they they have entered the market so to say and also the post know that the usp has also increased their number of parcel stations as they saw then people needed more not the traditional way in sweden to deliver parcels has been that the the recipient goes to an outlet or post office to pick up the parcels but the home delivery is really has been increasing a lot and we've seen that on the small packets increase as well so so the the need for getting things more smoothly to home to people are a very important aspect I think one follow-up here on the technical level benefiting from your combined expertise Joakim Hans if we think about the traditional letter mail standards and of course you've mentioned the importance of delivery to home in time of pandemic but we also heard about the the growing importance of of pickup points such as parcel parcel stations parcel lockers and thinking about the experience of measuring traditional letter mail quality of service and the auditing process and the sampling process how does the the world the scenario in which consumers receive maybe some letter mail or some form in combination with you know with parcels or with the use of pickup stations do the current systems and processes to measure quality of service allow for that today how do they incorporate the possibility that also for letter mail which traditionally goes home you know the consumers also have now a broader variety of of interaction points with the delivery given what they have learned with parcel processes are the quality of service standards able and processes able to measure and monitor what happens if if consumers start receiving letter mail also at the pickup points maybe Hans I start with you and go back to you again if that's okay yeah well traditionally quality of service measurement is more focused to letters and it's focused it's it's it's done with test letters done by an end-to-end test letters and if you look at parcels we had this discussion within SEM of course many times before what can we do about measurement of the parcel flows and there are two aspects which are important first using test parcels is quite expensive and most parcel flows you have track and trace so on not for not from an end-to-end perspective but from a well event tracking tracking event to another tracking event level you can produce quality of service data so the approach is you maybe you can use those track and trace events in a quality of service survey and actually within SEM we've made a technical specification concerning that there is some discussion about the harmonization of track and trace events within SEM because if you would like to would like to have a norm how to measure the quality of service parcels you must of course have certain parameters parameters which are the same in all in all new countries and that means that where do you where are these track and trace events placed that's that's an important question and they they differ from company to company if you're talking about end-to-end it's very clear it's the sender who posts an item and the receiver who receives it but that's that's a little bit difficult in the parcel environment and a lot of these measurements also had to do something with the monopoly monopoly like situation of the letter mail market may actually needed regulatory interventions to to to help the quality of service whereas in the parcel market there is a lot of competition so and you have this track and trace so is there really a need for these regulatory measures that's an open question very much open and then the ball goes to you Joachim both on the question of can the systems apply if letter mail starts being delivered also in pick up points and about the broader the broader open question on on the the role and necessity of a quality of service regulation and monitoring on on the parcel side how do you see this well i'm not a super expert on the measurement models i have a quite i have i have some insights and way but i don't think that the current method methodologies could solve the problem with if you start to deliver letters to parcel lockers but i agree with what Hans really said i don't have much to add but i know as i said in my initial speak that we are going to look at these issues in the ERGP the coming year and it's well before we have done that i don't have much to share really thank you thank you i have one last question from my side of those prepared in advance before opening up to the wider audience questions in the chat we've received some questions there and welcome questions from from all and and my question is thinking about the experience of the pandemic and reflections based on the pandemic such as what you've discussed today as this as the pandemic allowed for reflections regarding what quality of service requirements are most relevant to ensure that user needs are are met so what have we learned from it maybe you've started going in that territory now Joachim and and Hans but can you be more explicit what what do you think what lessons learned are we have we have we learned thanks to the tough circumstances of the of the pandemic and Hans to you first yes um i would say that it's uh one of the lessons is that reliance reliance of the service is very important especially if people really rely on companies like like my company to keep on functioning at home but speed so it's it's reliance and frequency but speed in our system currently it's the day the day plus one service which is measures and i think it's it's the importance it has is more on reliance than only speed if i if i make myself clear it's clearly that the pandemic has impaired the capacity process capacity so you could expect some leniency but um yeah i would i would say the importance of of the of that that you have a reliance reliable system that every but every day there is a delivery that's that's very important and that's uh i think it's one of the parts which kept the society functioning but the the the sheer focus on d plus one so 95 percent i i'm not i'm not sure if that's the right focus so but reliance of the service you should you should be able to rely on the service that's very important thank you hans you came over to you reliance to reliability over speed this one more important than the other should the regulator regulation be refocused on on one and also on the letters versus parcels question how does this work yeah well uh we have in sweden already gone one step away from the d plus one measurements to the d plus two that is now the basic service in in the universal service and there has been some investigations in this issue a few years ago and we are all we agree that uh reliance and that and that the mail comes we do a high certainly search at certain certainty is is more important than than than the speed and that is also the the view of a majority of the uh users than that that we have served so i i i so i think we might be quite okay with measuring the d plus two for the camp for the coming years as that could be a reasonable level but it is of course very important to make sure that and that every every uh item is delivered within not so so many days so certainty is more important than speed but and this the measurement system should cover that uh when it comes to parcels well uh yeah i think hans had some uh uh insights there with the difference in competition and also that transparency for the users are higher with these different uh mass trace track and trace applications that are available so so the need for uh regulation on that is perhaps uh lower i would say but of course uh it as the pandemic pandemic has shown it it is important uh that we can rely on these services as well so because we are changing our behavior and working more from home i think that will be uh quite clear in sweden that many organizations change their way of working and and people will work more from home even after the pandemic than they did before and that will uh make it important to to have a very good coverage of services to home premises thank you let me now tap into the uh insights from the chat questions thank you hossay for submitting for submitting questions and um there is a a question that is very concrete i think that's the easiest one to to launch now which is testing the the hypothesis whether quality targets were achieved because parcel volumes were capped by many operators to a certain limit maximum maybe i can start with you you're thinking about your your overview from your gp and other other insights as the role of caps by you know by many operators this does this actually help achieve a quality of service in in in uh in parcels for example uh i i don't get the question what is i caps i mean if the operators just didn't take the the the demand in the first place so also to be able to to achieve that reliability for example is that is that an explanation of the the the results well uh perhaps i i don't i don't have an answer to that one i'm sorry maybe i pass the ball to you hans i guess the hidden um the hidden basis of this question is that of course there are some operator subject to universal service obligations and some products product product service to universal service obligations and others which are which are not and so the role of caps can also differ by operator and products but can caps have been in in in different countries part of the part of the toolbox used in emergency situation to safeguard the quality of service um well in general i cannot answer it i must say that caps were in place also in the Netherlands to to try with with senders to get an understanding to to uh because the sometimes the the the whole process was really over cooking so to speak there was too much uh we couldn't handle it um and sometimes if you if you connect to to send us big companies etc you can can try to to get a more even flow so to speak but uh as you put the question i i don't have a concrete answer to that no sorry understood understood and what about the wider question this is the last question we have from the um from the audience q&a on could it be possible to define specific targets on quality of service for a situation such as pandemic i mean force measure gives a way out but do do we need specific targets for a situation like a pandemic do we need some some other way to balance that reliability even in difficult times or is force measure the only the only way to to achieve this perhaps i start with you Joakim and then back to to Hans yeah of course it it would be possible to have uh some kind of alternative system to put in in these kind of situations but uh i as i have uh learned from my colleagues in europe uh the force measure uh was enough at least to handle this situation so but but about perhaps it's worth thinking of uh such uh an alternative as a compliment to the force measure uh i think that could be interesting to think of uh in the upcoming works that that that that are going to be done in this area so thank you um Hans your thoughts yes i must say i completely agree with what mr this but with Joakim said because one of my okay the force uh pandemic is a force measure situation but the pinpointing uh of the exact consequences is very hard to do actually so some leniency and some some flexibility in thinking how to handle the uh this uh in the relations between the regular regular regular regulator and uh designated company is i think is is much needed the most important thing is that you do everything to continue the uh service that's that's the most important thing and well if you if you look at the targets and they are met or not that's what i said i think reliability is is more important than speed so a little bit out of the box thinking is needed okay we don't know which box but it needs to be outside of the current one and uh i guess there is also a bit of dissatisfaction you mentioned in the beginning with the concept of force measure it is not like a flooding it is not like an event that this can be circumscribed so that's maybe a it's not something that can go and you know where somebody can go and clean a database in a precise way that is not disputable so this is um this is a part of uh of the lesson learned um so uh this is uh this is um helpful and um we've now reached one hour we have additional time if needed but i also know we've covered quite a lot of ground so i'd like to offer less opportunity to each of the speakers before thanking them for any final remarks before closing perhaps starting with you Joachim any final factors and considerations based on the reflection today and and and and and and the broader question of regulatory responses to the COVID-19 pandemic well no it has been a interesting discussion and i think both regulators and operators have quite common goals in this area to get the post postal system working in a good way so i think there is some issues to be dealt with and we will look at them so i think we have some more important discussions coming up in this area but well i stop with that thank you thank you Joachim hands final remarks yeah thank you well i must say i've i've been able to share most of my insights on this so thank you very much but i don't have any big final remarks at this moment then allow me to thank you both Hans Joachim thanks for taking the time and being with us today thank you for the to the upu international bureau for hosting this webinar series which draws to a close now thank you for all the audience participants for questions and your time in in throughout the three the three webinars on the COVID-19 postal regulatory responses this is a topic that will be covered as part of the of the forthcoming upu postal regulatory panorama publication which covers a broader set of topics and and so i think it is it is great to have a professional and practitioner conversation with policymakers operators and different different viewpoints on on on how the postal sector has evolved and responded and and and supported the the the resilience during the the pandemic and we're still learning from this i think it's it's been a great privilege to hear from many different experts across the world and this is uh it's it's not the end uh uh in terms of of learning from from this and i think that we would need to remain to be curious and ask good questions and support the the both policymakers and operators in in in getting the best decisions with this i would say thank you all and and suggest that we draw the event to a close thank you very much and have a good rest of the day thank you