The Agency for Communication Networks and Services of the Republic of Slovenia invites the interested public to submit, by 25 September 2026 to submit comments, proposals or amendments to the draft new General Act on Accounting Information and the Calculation of the Net Cost of the Universal Postal Service Obligation.
The Agency has drawn up the proposal in response to the findings of the Court of Auditors in its Audit Report ‘Implementation and Financing of the Universal Postal Service’ dated 20 December 2024. The Court of Auditors found that ‘ZPSto-2 does not clearly define the concept of an unfair financial burden, nor does it set out objective and unambiguous criteria on the basis of which AKOS could carry out an appropriate assessment of its occurrence.’ Although the Agency included a definition in 2020, it is descriptive and general; therefore, the Agency has prepared a clear and precisely defined criterion in advance for determining an unfair financial burden, namely:
- supplementing the definition of an unfair financial burden by specifying that it applies when it exceeds 3 per cent of the revenue generated from the universal postal service.
The net cost would constitute an unfair financial burden if it exceeded 3 per cent of the revenue generated from the universal postal service, which is the most common criterion among the ERGP countries observed. Where the calculated net cost of the universal postal service is below this threshold, the universal postal service provider is not entitled to compensation and bears the cost itself, as such a burden is not yet deemed to jeopardise the financial sustainability of the provision of the universal postal service, whilst at the same time representing a sufficiently high threshold to encourage the universal postal service provider to provide the service efficiently. The Agency carried out a review of the arrangements for the payment of compensation for the provision of the universal postal service in the Member States of the European Union by analysing the contributions published on the Cullen International website and the findings of the working group within the ERGP (the group of postal service regulators from Member States), which examined the financing of the universal postal service in 2025. A comparative review of funding further showed that countries which actually pay compensation rely predominantly on direct public funds. Compensation funds financed by contributions from service providers often exist only on paper or do not provide sufficient resources; in European practice, no country has been found to cover the entire net cost, which constitutes an unfair financial burden, solely through contributions from postal service providers.
With this proposal for a general act, the Agency aims to ensure greater predictability of the regulatory framework and a gradual adaptation to changes in the environment.
Please send any comments, proposals or amendments to the Agency’s address (Stegne 7, 1000 Ljubljana) or to the email address (info.box@akos-rs.si). Please ensure you quote reference number 0073-13/2026.
