The Workshop on " The evolution of Courier Services and EETT’s Role” organized by the Hellenic Telecommunications and Post Commission was successfully completed today, February 2nd, 2006.

EETT President, Professor Nikitas Alexandridis, stressed that ΕΕΤΤ shall focus its efforts on the current critical stage of the Postal Market liberalization, by creating a transparent and impartial regulatory environment and operation rules in the Greek market encouraging entrepreneurship, investments in the sector, competitiveness, innovation, and preventing businesses offering low quality postal services from engaging in their activities.

At the workshop, Mr. Konstantinos Stavropoulos, Communications Secretary General of the Ministry of Transport and Communications, pointed out, among other things: “I strongly believe that through systematic work, prudence, and consent we can successfully win the bet of those reforms that shall take the postal services market to its full liberalization.”

EETT Vice President, Mr. Th. Dravillas, stated that ΕΕΤΤ shall continue ensuring the equal treatment of providers, encouraging the development of a Postal Market based on the principles of transparency, impartiality, reliability and flexibility, preventing a suffocating regulation of the market. It shall be EETT’s main concern to develop the Market by concurrently improving the quality service users enjoy.

The first part of the Workshop, entitled "The Courier Services Market: Current Situation” was coordinated by Mr. Th. Dravillas.

Mr. Vassilis Triantafyllopoulos, EETT executive, presented in his opening speech the current situation in the Courier Services Market.

Mr. Gerasimos Agoranos, General Manager of SPEEDEX SA, referred to the financial results of businesses in the sector, as well as to ways to improve their image and performance.

Targeted activities in international Courier Services has been the issue of the presentation of Mr. Michalis Moschogiannis, General Manager of ORBIT COURIER SA.

Next, Mr. Christos Kostoulas, Managing Director of ELTA COURIER, spoke extensively on competitiveness and flexibility of public corporations in a liberalized environment.

The first round of opinions was completed with the speech delivered by Mr. Apostolis Georgantzis, Managing Director of ACS SA, who referred to the critical importance of quality and more specifically to the indicators measuring the quality of Courier services.

The second part of the workshop focused on the “Trends in and Prospects of the Courier Services Market”, and was coordinated by Mr. Giorgos Tsaprounis, EETT Member.

The said section started with the speech of Mr. Nikolaos Printezis, EETT Post Offices Director, who made an extensive presentation of the results and main conclusions of the survey carried out by EETT annually, on the basis of business data. The survey, as he pointed out, regards the developments made in the sector, as well as the difficulties and problems encountered. He stressed that the future image of the sector shall be established by the ability of businesses to reach an agreement for the philosophy considering courier services a "social good", a good relating to correct pricing and sold in a safe environment, to prevail.

Mr. Dimitris Georgiou, President of the Greek Association of Postal Undertakings, referred to ways for small and medium-sized courier services businesses to survive in competitive markets.

The position expressed by Mr. Tassos Vassilopoulos, IT Manager of DHL International SA, concerned the future of the Greek and international courier services market, placing emphasis on the part of e-Communications in the Courier Services market.

Mr. Panagiotis Varzakakos, Administration Consultant to Geniki Tachydromiki SA, focused on the relationship between the Courier Services market and the Transports market and on the points where both sectors can grow.

The speeches/ presentations shall be available at EETT’s website (www.eett.gr, Publicity/ Workshops - Events).