The territorial postal presence contract, which finances the 17,000 branches of La Poste in France and allows it to fulfill its public service mission, must be cut by 50 million euros this year, the group’s CEO announced on Friday September 27 2024.
“There is this budget cut of 50 million euros out of 160 million which has been decided and we are going to discuss with the State”declared Philippe Wahl, on the sidelines of the congress of the Association of Rural Mayors of France (AMF) in Saint-Julien (Côte-d’Or), during which he was questioned by an elected official.
“We will no longer be able to operate municipal postal agencies”
“If this cut is made in 2024, it undoubtedly announces a cut in 2025, which means that we will no longer be able to operate municipal postal agencies”he added, cited by theAgence France-Presse (AFP), indicating that the group had “already incurred a lot of expenses for 2024”.
Signed by La Poste, the AMF and the State for the period 2023-2025, this territorial postal presence contract, initially accompanied by credits of 177 million euros per year, compensates for the financial losses linked to the presence of 17 000 postal “contact points” (post offices, municipal and intermunicipal agencies, France Services, etc.) throughout the country. Thanks to this network, more than 97% of the population is within five kilometers or less than twenty minutes of a postal “contact point”.
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More than 2.4 billion euros invested since 2008
But the cost of La Poste’s land-use planning mission is increasing faster than the resources allocated to it to finance this mission. “This cut has been decided, then we discuss. In rural municipalities, there are a lot of municipal postal agencies where La Poste pays part of the municipal employee’s salary, so it’s a real tragedy for the future of these points of contact.underlined Philippe Wahl.
According to the AMF, since the signing of the first postal presence contract in 2008, “more than 2.4 billion euros have been invested in the regions to adapt and modernize the postal presence and support the most vulnerable customers”. “This territorial equalization fund […] was designed to benefit as a priority the areas that need it most, such as rural areas, mountain areas, priority districts of urban policy and overseas territories.specifies the association.
