Spillover in the Mail: EU postal monopolies may end by 2011

Despite its importance to understanding the process of European integration, spillover is a concept many of my students have difficulty grasping. However, I have found a new example that I think demonstrates the concept in an assessable way — the liberalization of postal services in the European Union.

Yesterday, a committee of the European Parliament voted in favor of liberalizing EU postal services across the 27 member bloc in four years time, a move that could eventually mean the end of national monopolies in the delivery of letters and postcards. While there is still several legislative hurdles to overcome before postal services in Europe are opened to private competition, this vote suggests it just a matter of time before liberalization happens. Why would European states want to have standard mail delivered by private firms? Spillover provides a good explanation.

For those who have not taken a class in international relations or European politics, spillover is one of three mechanisms which Neofunctionalism, a theory of regional integration, says drives the integration process. According to neofunctionalists, economic integration between states in one sector creates incentives for integration in further sectors and thus integration in one sector "spills over" into additional sectors. For neofunctionalists, economic integration has simply created pressure to integrate mail delivery.

Mail is a very important part of doing business (In the EU, 90 percent of mail is sent by businesses). This mail could be delivered far more efficiently in Europe if there was a common European-wide postal service, but the Europe Union does not have the capacity or the mandate to provide this service. Therefore, in order to provide European businesses with the efficient postal service their interstate economic integration demands, the EU has to find some way to promote integration of the national postal services. Their solution is to turn to the free-market and let all firms compete for the right to deliver the mail. The fact that businesses operate across national borders in Europe just like business operate across state borders here in the United States makes having a common postal system desirable, but the EU is not the United States so they have to liberalize instead of Europeanize the mail.