The CEO of the La Poste group announced a budget cut of 50 million euros in the territorial postal presence contract. Postal services in the territories will be the first affected.
Questioned by an elected official on the sidelines of the congress of the Association of Rural Mayors of France, the CEO of the La Poste group announced a budget cut of 50 million euros this year. A loss which could impact the public service mission provided by La Poste, particularly in the territories.
“There is this budget cut of 50 million euros out of 160 million which has been decided and we are going to discuss it with the State. 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,” explained Philippe Wahl.
Signed by La Poste, the Association of Mayors of France (AMF) and the State for the period 2023-2025, the territorial postal presence contract finances the group’s 17,000 branches in France and allows it to fulfill its public service mission. .
Initially accompanied by credits of 177 million euros per year, it compensates for the financial losses linked to the presence of 17,000 postal “contact points” throughout the territory. These include post offices, municipal and intermunicipal agencies and France Services points.
This network allows more than 97% of the population to be less than five kilometers or less than 20 minutes from a postal “contact point”. The problem lies in the fact that the cost of La Poste’s land-use planning mission is growing faster than the resources allocated to it to finance it.
According to the AMF, “more than 2.4 billion euros have been invested in the territories to adapt and modernize the postal presence and support the most vulnerable customers” since the signing of the first postal presence contract in 2008. Knowing that “rural areas, mountain areas, priority districts of urban policy and overseas territories” are the first to benefit.
“A real drama”
Philippe Wahl underlined the fact that “in rural municipalities, there are a lot of municipal postal agencies where La Poste pays part of the municipal employee’s salary”, this means that this budget cut is “a real tragedy for the ‘future of these points of contact’.
In a press release, the CGT voiced its opposition to this announcement “which clearly goes against the interests of the population and postal workers whose jobs are threatened”. With the October 1 strike approaching, the union called for support for “a major day of mobilization for the public service.”
For its part, Sud PTT deplored that public service missions are “taken exclusively through the prism of profits”, on the side of the management of La Poste as well as the State, one of the two shareholders of the group with the Caisse. deposits. The union called for “a broad debate on the future of the public postal service, in all its components, banking, communication, sending mail or parcels, territorial presence”.
