The National Commission of Markets and Competition (CNMC) has supported the position of the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility against Correos in the controversy over the minimum number of postal offices that must operate in each municipality based on its inhabitants, establishing that in localities with more than 40,000 residents there must exist, at a minimum, two offices.
According to the agreement of the Regulatory Supervision Room of the CNMC, to which Europa Press has had access, the decision responds to an urgent consultation raised on July 14 by the General Subdirectorate of Postal Regime of the Ministry, after receiving several complaints from users related to the coverage of the public postal service.
The origin of the disagreement was in the reading of section 4.b of the Universal Postal Service Provision Plan approved in 2021, where the minimum number of Correos offices that must exist in each population center is established.
Correos argued that a single office was sufficient in municipalities of up to 80,000 inhabitants, while the Ministry and the CNMC defend that the regulations establish that there must be at least one office in populations of between 3,500 and 40,000 inhabitants and, from that threshold, one additional for every 40,000 people.
The resolution emphasizes that the only exception provided that frees the designated operator from opening these additional offices by population segments occurs when the already established network guarantees that the distance from any home to the nearest office does not exceed 2.5 kilometers.