UPU Press Conference: Release of the State of the Postal Sector Report 2026

Good morning everyone and I do apologise for the the delayed start.

I had to travel all the way from from burn and unfortunately I underestimated the amount of time that it was going to take to get through the A1.

There was an accident and, and, and as you can imagine, there is always a a long backlog of vehicles and traffic conditions are pretty atrocious.

But again, thank you for joining us this morning.

And before we we begin, let me introduce myself.

[Other language spoken]

I'm the director for Policy, Regulation and Markets and I have my colleagues here with me, Salih Khan, who is the coordinator for the what we call the Knowledge Centre and think tank Programme.

And of course Jose Hansen, my dear colleague, who is our lead economist as well.

And the both of them are essentially the the main authors of of this report.

So to kick start, I think it's worth reminding ourselves that tomorrow is World Post Day.

And on this day the Universal Postal Union will publish the State of the Postal Sector Report 2026.

This is our annual assessment of the postal sector across 192 member countries.

Now the report looks at how the sector is performing, how postal operators and countries compare with their peers, and, importantly, what the evidence tells us about the future of the sector.

If I were to summarise the central message of this year's report in one sentence, it would be this.

The global postal sector is not short of information to help it respond to major changes.

However, the process by which we turn that information into policy and action needs to become more agile and better coordinated.

So let me briefly explain our evidence that leads us to this conclusion.

1st, the global postal sector remains very much relevant for our needs.

Across the world, postal networks continue to provide vital services to large segments of the population.

Of course, the traditional letter post is declining, but this is largely due to the fundamental change in the way we communicate as a society.

But the decline of letters does not mean an end to the extensive national physical network that all posts around the world have.

Small businesses rely on the post everyday to reach customers and participate in global trade.

Governments rely on postal networks to give citizens access to essential public services, particularly in peri urban and rural communities.

And some of the most vulnerable segments of society rely on post for their everyday financial needs.

Indeed, we are increasingly seeing governments leverage their postal networks to deliver a much broader range of social, financial and government services that bring tangible benefits to citizens and businesses alike.

But we also have to be very clear about what is happening to traditional postal activity.

Domestic letter port volumes of NOW NOW stand at just 66% of their 2015 levels, while cross-border letter post stands at nearly 737%.

In other words, in just over a decade, we've lost nearly 2/3 of global international letter flows.

On the other hand, delivery of small packets and parcels, both of which are major drivers of e-commerce, are growing.

But for most postal operators, they're not growing fast enough to compensate.

The typical postal operator has around 74% of its domestic letter market, but only 27% of the growing parcel market.

That presents us with a stock market reality.

Posts are dominant in the part of the market where volumes are disappearing and somewhat less dominant in the part where volumes are growing.

And even as posts are expanding alternative access points, including parcel lockers and shared service centres, this reality holds.

What we take away from this is that the postal network remains essential, but the economic foundations on which it has traditionally operated are changing rapidly.

We also cannot simply assume that stronger economic or e-commerce growth will solve these revenue pressures.

The IMF projects slower global growth for 2026 with moderate inflation levels.

Our report describes this emerging regime as distalcation, and I know it sounds rather strange, but it is a attempt at describing a situation in which disconnection between countries, and by this I mean the disconnection that arises out of emerging trade and customs policies, technological decoupling and financial fragmentation, is being accompanied by economic, sorry, economic stagnation and inflation.

Now these pressures persist for as long as these disconnections do, and they can be characterised in some ways as being endogenous and structural.

Postal operators are particularly exposed to this environment.

Their costs are largely fixed with fixed infrastructure and workforce costs.

The average operating margin of a postal operator is negative.

The obligations that ensure the universal service, including quality of service obligations around delivery timing and geographic coverage can limit some of the cost minimization options that are available to most other businesses.

Our second body of evidence comes from the 10th edition of the UPS Integrated Index for Postal Development.

And in all good form as other UN institutions, we have an acronym for this, it's the two IPD and this is a Composite Index measuring postal maturity across 181 countries.

And here there is some encouraging news.

Overall postal maturity is improving.

For 2025, we found that 58 countries moved up the postal development level compared with 16 that moved down.

And very importantly, Africa has recorded the strongest net progress of any region.

We're also seeing postal services becoming faster with the quality of service improving across every region.

But underneath those improvements, there is a significant weakness.

The progress we see in speed and service quality is not matched by progress in the capabilities that make postal operators resilient businesses.

The capacity of postal operators to absorb external shocks and continue operating effectively declined in five of the six regions that we keep track of.

And that happened during a year in which the sector experienced several major external shocks.

There is nevertheless another encouraging development.

We see a clear pattern of posts moving up the assessment scale and delivering better services to their customers.

Tomorrow, on World Post Day, we will recognise the leaders in postal Excellence, the regional champions and the recipients of the Postal Progress Awards.

These awards are determined using the same measured data covering 181 countries.

That finally brings me to our Third Point and what has been happening over the past 12 months.

And here, unfortunately, the picture becomes more complex.

Globally, the total number of postal items increased by 21%, but at the same time, and this is a key insight, the typical postal corridor between two countries shrank by 10%.

So we are actually seeing something quite striking, a rising total moving across a shrinking network.

And in over this 12 month period, three major exogenous shocks landed on the global postal network.

When the United States suspended duty free treatment of small parcels in August 2025, postal arrivals into the US went from a decline of 9% to a decline of nearly 70% in a single month.

At the same time, the number of countries sending postal items to the US also fell.

Then, when the European Union introduced A3 euro duty per item in July 2026, we saw another significant effect.

While the circumstances were different, the number of postal items entering the EU still moved from a decline of 7% to a decline of nearly 31%.

And to compound all of this, in March 2026, conflict in the Middle East materially affected the postal network.

Mail sent from the from the Arab region halved in a single month.

Now, the lesson we draw from these events is not about any one country or any single policy.

It is about the speed with which policy makers and business leaders are able to respond to these external events.

[Other language spoken]

The flexibility and adaptability of rules, both global and domestic, are as important as what those rules say.

When we put these bodies of evidence together, the conclusion is increasingly difficult to avoid.

The challenges facing the postal sector are structural rather than simply cyclical.

What the past 12 months have added is speed.

The world's two largest destination markets, the US and the EU, changed their customs treatment of small packets and parcels.

A regional conflict reshaped the postal geography of an important region within a matter of weeks, and real postal revenue completed its third consecutive year of decline.

These developments happened concurrently and rapidly.

The sector has had very little time to formulate, coordinate and implement policy responses capable of addressing them.

And that brings us back to the central argument of our report this year.

The problem is not that we lack information.

[Other language spoken]

We can see changes in flows, we can identify pressure and corridors, we can measure service quality.

And increasingly, we can see shocks moving through the postal network almost in real time.

The challenge, however, is turning that information into coordinated policy responses quickly enough.

Our analysis also points to a fundamental coordination problem.

No single actor captures enough of the benefit from fixing the system to have sufficient incentive to fix it alone.

That is one reason why some of these problems have persisted.

And it is precisely where the UPU, the Universal Postal Union, as an intergovernmental specialised agency of the UN, as an important role to play.

We are working on a range of policy and technical solutions to help our member countries respond to these challenges.

1 area in which we're currently experimenting and innovating is the use of artificial intelligence.

And no surprises there.

We're exploring how AI tools can help individual postal operators and policy makers synthesise information that today is fragmented across different systems, sources and institutions.

It's really all about connecting the dots and providing policy makers with enough information to be able to make informed decisions in a timely fashion.

The idea is that these tools will bring all this information together into a common environment that supports faster decision making at the network level.

The principle behind this work is straightforward.

We want to provide the platforms that allow all stakeholders in both postal and postal adjacent sectors to interoperate while continuing to compete through their own strategic decisions.

Cooperation at the intergovernmental and ecosystem level whilst ensuring the competitive, sorry competitiveness of individual posts are not contradictions In a global interconnected postal ecosystem.

We increasingly need both.

So what do we conclude from the evidence before us?

First, the global postal network.

To remain relevant even in the golden age of e-commerce and electronic communications, requires continual adaptation as customer needs and markets evolve.

Second, maintaining a single global postal territory depends on the capability of individual operators to deliver services that are relevant to customers and quality services.

For operators to achieve this, the global rules need to be coherent, predictable and particularly when it comes to customs and other supply chain measures.

3rd, we need greater action at the systemic level on inter postal payments service standards.

Better customs, data exchange and network rules that encourage collaboration and a reimagining of the universal service.

And finally, postal operators themselves need to continue innovating to design services that will meet the needs of the next generation of customers and not play catch up with current expectations.

They need to become more customer oriented.

Again, thank you all for being here with us this morning despite the weather and your interest in what is still a vital sector for global growth.

Both my team and I are now happy to take any questions you might have.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you very much for taking my question.

I am Maeva Cheblier from QDA News, the Japanese news agency, and I have a few questions for you this morning.

First of all, thank you very much for being here today.

It's a pleasure to see you here in Geneva.

Thank you for coming from Perth.

I just wanted to yeah, I just have a few questions.

First, maybe more technically you mentioned in the in the report in the first part that international parcels are at 189,000,000 items.

It remains under remain below their 2019 volume of 240 million.

And then later in the report is mentioned that China is handling 200 16.5 billion delivery items in 2025.

I just wanted to confirm that the number for China is, is for China it's is it like transnational deliveries?

If you could just precise that that would be helpful.

Then in the the leader of in postal excellence, Japan, Australia, Austria, France, Germany, Switzerland, not in disorder and Thailand are mentioned.

Do you see some challenges also for for them?

I'm especially thinking about, you know, the digital transition, elderly people, how can they manage, you know, the, the apps and, and everything that is related to technology.

I also wanted to ask you the role of AI, if you have a real concrete example how AI could help, especially because I have seen that you have 11 AI operators.

I have seen it somewhere in your report, page 6 I think and I yeah, exactly by chicks AI No 11 specialist AI agent under a supervisor.

I just wanted to confirm what it is about.

Thank you very much.

So let me thank you for those questions and they they are very important questions for sure.

Let me let me try and address the the last question first on artificial intelligence.

The adoption of artificial intelligence is as we see it is occurring at 2 levels.

At a national domestic level, we have operators are increasingly making use of artificial intelligence and particularly agentic AI to be able to find efficiencies, cost savings in the way they run their operations.

So to give you an example, some operators have used AI for the purposes of routing decisions in terms of how the delivery network works so that they can actually determine real on a real time basis, the the most optimum route to take in order to deliver parcels across a particular parcels or letters across a particular network.

Likewise, other stakeholders in the postal supply chain, for example, customs authorities are increasingly using artificial intelligence and agentic AI for the purposes of screening inbound items and determining on a risk profile basis which items should be targeted for further inspection.

And governments likewise, so that that's occurring at A at a national level, at an international level, at least as far as the UP is concerned.

And, and I would invite my colleague Jose Anson to talk a bit more about this afterwards.

We are developing what's referred to as the Unified Data Platform in, in simple terms, it's really about coming back to this point.

We, we have a disparate amount of information and, and the information is a lot of the times real time.

We we can actually keep track of items travelling across the postal network in real time that information and we have other things that Member States provide us by way of what are they doing operationally, how they tracking against standards that they adhere to.

These are all different points of data which when brought together in a in a fashion that allows us to draw foresight and analysis, it becomes a very significant and strategic tool.

And this platform, as we call it, the Unified Data platform is essentially aimed at doing that.

It's about drawing on data that we have in the past, drawing on data that's real time and also potentially forecasting to try and bring together a picture that allows both our operators as well as our other stakeholders, governments and and and regulators to be able to draw informed conclusions.

Now there are risks we we all have heard over the last few weeks about the risk associated with artificial intelligence and particularly agent AI.

And you know, the risks are twofold.

1 is you may have bad actors who may choose to make use of AI in order to achieve their objectives.

And in this instance in a cross-border context in, in the exchange of mail that could have very significant consequences for operations.

And then you have the very real possibility that artificial intelligence, particularly agentic AI may leave its testing environment and, and do its own stuff.

And, and having the ability to control this is going to be very important.

And, and because we have very varied postal development across of 192 member states, Not everyone has the capacity and also the the, the skills to be able to, to manage this.

And and it is to address these sorts of risks that we are in the UPU about to kick start a process in developing a voluntary.

AI governance framework for the postal sector.

You may be aware that the UNAI for Good Summit and particularly the report of the independent experts that was released in July here in Geneva talked about the fact that, you know, most governments have agreed on that sort of horizontal principles that should should apply to governance of AI, but it's not translating into sector specific particularities.

And what we're trying to do with this initiative is to address this particular concern.

And again, it's a voluntary standard.

We will draw on best practise across different sectors.

I know that our colleagues in the ITU, the International Telecom Communications Union, as well as the World Health Organisation are developing sector specific AI initiatives, governance frameworks.

And we, we, we hope to assist our member states along the same lines.

So there's a lot happening on AI, lots of opportunities, but also quite a few risk factors.

Let me now maybe give Jose an opportunity to address the AI question.

Then I'll take the other two questions one at a time.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you very much, Silva.

Silva was explaining very well the purpose of our development in Agent TKI.

I would simply add that we try to better orchestrate decision making at all levels of the the organisation and in these postal institutions as well.

Tomorrow's notion of competitive advantage will evolve towards one would call cognitive advantage.

This is the capability of leveraging AIM to transform the way you you produce and use knowledge.

But at the same time, we live in a in a world full of uncertainties and with plenty of dilemmas to be solved.

And the worst manner of solving a dilemma is to choose between 2 extreme options.

What our agency Care Development are aiming at is to offer our member states are designated to operate the regulators.

Why the range of options between what could be two extreme options, 2 extreme decision when one is trying to solve a dilemma.

So this is absolutely critical, particularly because we are likely to, to, to to be in these world of uncertainties for a certain time.

And this is where AI agent TKI applied in our context could be a game changer.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you for that additional points.

Let me now turn to the second question which is really about our postal leaders.

The the postal operators are doing exceptionally well and in the top ten in terms of postal development.

Again, I'm I'm just going to give you some broad brush suggestions based on our analysis.

I think one critical factor is, is the fact that almost all of them get the basics and foundations right.

So there is a, a very specific focus on being customer centric, very specific focus on getting service quality spot on and then ensuring what most other businesses do, which is always focus on the bottom line and, and you know, finding efficiencies.

So getting the the basics right is, is absolutely critical and, and almost all of them do this.

The second thing which is quite interesting in our analysis is, is the fact that almost all of them invariably have a diversification strategy, which is really about recognising that the post is a network, it's a physical network.

You do invariably have a person, a physical person at the end point in terms of delivery, which is a, is a great strength.

And that physical network, if you are brave enough to dream of it in that way, it's agnostic about what it needs to deliver.

And by this I mean, you know, traditionally postal networks are used for the delivery of parcels, letters, packets and all of this.

But it is also true to say that if it's configured right, it could deliver other services.

We have examples of postal networks which deliver health, digital government services, identity services, checking in on pensioners at home.

It's the variety is mind boggling.

And what what I think is happening with a lot of these leaders in, in, in, in, in postal development is this dual strategy, getting the foundations right and also ensuring that they're diversified enough to deal with the risks arising from the traditional markets.

And that diversification strategy, it needs to be carefully thought out.

You know, you just can't step into providing health services or step into providing digital government services.

There needs to be an infrastructure for that.

You need to build it out.

You need to train people and and I think a lot of these, the, the top ten typically are very focused on, on, on, on getting these different elements right.

Maybe I'd ask Jose or Sally to add to this.

[Other language spoken]

Yes, it's very important that the postal companies, if they want to move to the next generation of postal services, carefully designed their diversification strategy moving towards a wider range of services compared to, to, to today's situation.

And this is what we observe in the in the leaders that in order to, to, to, to be at the top as they are today, they are indeed doing a lot of efforts to select these services in these wider range of services portfolio.

So it's, it's critical they cannot, they cannot just count on parcel.

Parcels is not, is no silver bullet to, to fix to cope with the decline of the traditional correspondent correspondence and and letters.

You need much more than parcel.

You need to go beyond parcels if you want to remain a postal leader in the future too.

Thanks very much, Lucy.

Last question which is really about the statistics that we presented in connection with parcel flows.

I think I'd leave this to Jose as well, perhaps because the the data is it, it, it, it is interesting and and there are nuances to it which I'd be more comfortable with Jose actually addressing that question.

[Other language spoken]

The area of postal statistics is more complex than one can think about and we actually reforming our current official postal statistics framework in order to clarify a number of definition of categories with the evolution of postal services, both domestic and international.

We are now it's really now urgent to avoid confusion to reform and and we are in the middle of this this discussion for the reform of definition and what we measure.

But to answer more specifically, specifically your question, the small number that you are setting, the 240 million, it's only international parcels.

Those are really relatively heavy stuff, things that can weigh up to 30 kilos and that move across borders.

And in this category, you don't typically have the small packets that you get when you order online across border.

This is a traditional definition and this is exactly the kind of area we want to clarify in the future in response to the evolution of what is being transported through the international postal network.

So more clarity, particularly in the in the coming 2, two years about this and then the 260 billion about China.

This is all players in the postal and express sector.

They call it their postal and express because in China things that they really deliver very, very quickly usually and you have all, all including the e-commerce platforms delivering themselves.

These, these parcels are into these 260 billion.

So it's not just the the Chinese Postal Service.

[Other language spoken]

And Jose makes a very important point, which is it's a quirk of the definitions that we use in measuring things, but it's also reflective of the evolution of male.

So in the, in the, in, in the way we define male is based on dimensions and meat effectively.

And over time, it's true to say that what was traditionally would be considered large letters started containing goods, They started containing merchandise items.

And so at the if I'm not mistaken, it was in the 2016 Congress in Istanbul, which is our planning potentially meeting that we adopted a sub classification trying to distinguish between packets, letters and and parcels.

And much of the volumes when we refer to as e-commerce volumes, they, they straddle the sort of packets and parcels segments.

But we, you know, I, I think they what, what we have reflected in the report captures in essence the flows and, and reflects them absolutely accurately.

I believe we have a question online from Nikki.

[Other language spoken]

You cannot hear them.

Is it going to be on the do we hear his chair or I can't hear you?

Maybe someone read the question?

Colleague from Nikkei, we cannot hear you in the room.

I'll try to unmute Zoom and see if I can hear you on my laptop.

If you could kindly put your question in chat, we'll try to answer.

There she is.

Did we answer all your questions that you had for us in the room?

[Other language spoken]

Did you have anything else?

[Other language spoken]

We're just waiting for our colleague.

The impact as you reported has been seen between August 2025 and and September.

Are you, are you seeing also like do we have all the numbers since September 2025?

Do we know currently or even later in October, November, December, what happened for the parcels for the US if it if it influence the market?

And maybe again another question, you mentioned the in, in this in paychecks indispensable qualification is that in the 1970s demands were still growing.

Today it is not.

Do you think it's a consequence of, of also the technology and I mean parcels taking advantage over the, the packages?

And very last question, I'm sorry.

Knowing that, you know, the, the Swiss Confederation and the Swiss post announced that up like from 2035, the post could be delivered every two days.

And I, I have also seen that the Chinese delivery company Speedaf, if I'm pronouncing well, also wants to, to come to Switzerland to deliver parcels more fastly.

It's quite controversial when you think about a postal leader that they want to deliver finally their mails every two days and, and that, that China would also come on the market.

Do you have any reaction?

Do you think it's, it's a good strategy?

And maybe are we not going is, is the post not going a bit away of its mandate of delivering, delivering post?

Thank you very much.

So it's three questions there and I'll start.

No, no, no problems at all.

It's it's, it's very good questions and let me try and answer them as best as we can.

So with the last question, I want to be clear that we're not here to comment on specific decisions that may be taken by each of our Member States.

But what I want to paint for you is a picture of what is happening right across the world in in many parts of the world.

As we've described in the report and I've spoken to it in, in my opening comments, most postal operators what what we refer to as designated operators.

So these are entities, business entities that have been designated by their governments to ensure the universal service and alongside those universal service, a number of obligations that these operators need to provide for.

So it's, it could be a question of the number of access points across the country.

Typically, it could be constraints around pricing, it could be constraints around how flexibly they can deal with their workforce.

And there could be requirements around service standards, whether it's next day delivery, on day delivery, 2 day delivery and coverage as well.

You know, do you, do you have to deliver to every address in, in a, in a, in a, in a country?

All of these parameters are usually defined by each and every government as part of the universal service.

It's typically set out in their legislative frameworks and I'm sure that's also the case in Switzerland.

And, and as much as there is a focus, quite rightfully, in providing for a universal service to ensure that all citizens have access to communication, to the exchange of physical items, all of these things come with a cost.

And when you have a market that is highly competitive and you are having declining volumes passing through that network, the unit cost of each item to be delivered through that fixed network increases.

You know, that's the economics of things and one of the ways and, and it sort of brings into question the sustainability of the operator, the designated operator.

And so as governments have tried to address this tension between the need to maintain the universal service and the need to keep it financially sustainable, they are re looking at these different parameters that I talked about.

And and this is a trend across the world.

We we have a number of governments who have re looked at their quality of service standards.

So to give you an example, in in, in the United Kingdom, in and in Australia, and these are just examples, the regulators undertook some very extensive consumer surveys, citizen service to understand what do people actually want.

And it turns out for most people, they're not interested in immediate delivery or next day delivery in in the case of letters, they may do so in the case of packets.

We all love to have our parcels containing items delivered to us within an hour.

And and so those conversations are driving changes to the service standards and each government is approaching it based on their particularities.

And one of the ways we have found that governments have addressed primarily in in most regions is through reducing the service standards for letter mail delivery.

So it, it used to be priority letters been delivered next day, it's now potentially D + 2 as we call it, two days from the time it's collected.

And then in some other places like Australia where you know, the country is huge, it's D + 3 or D + 4.

And, and these are necessary changes to find that solution between sustainability, the financial sustainability of the network and what citizens are wanting.

So it's a, it's a very complex space.

And, and what I would say is sometimes it's easy for entities that do not have these universal service obligations to target those segments of the market that are highly profitable.

[Other language spoken]

And we we have statistics to show this, that the more profitable segments in most countries is the metropolitan area and and metropolitan areas are much smaller to service size wise typically.

But in countries like Australia where or, or the United States, you have a huge continent size nation to cover, it's usually the designated operator.

In the case of Australia, it's Australia Post.

In the case of the US, it's the USPS and Japan, it's Japan Post.

You can rely on them to have that letter or that packet delivered to the furthest end of that jurisdiction.

But again, it comes to the cost.

And so again, this, this is a ongoing policy dialogue.

And, and I would say that it's not reflective of operators wanting to just cut back on their service levels.

It is the reality of things.

So they're facing stiff competition in, in, in those segments of the market where there is clearly others who are prepared to step in and provide, but not in the, in the further reach, further reaches of, of, of of a country.

And at the end of the day, it's a physical network.

So you have a cost to cover that.

I hope that Jose or Saleh wanted to add anything to that.

I think that sort of answers that.

Can you just remind me a second question because I've forgotten that somewhat.

[Other language spoken]

So we have three questions for Nikki.

The first one is about AI systems.

What kind of solutions would it offer when you ask, we are losing volumes to our top corridor, what should we do?

The second one is do we have a time schedule for implementing this AI system?

And the third one is methodological a bit Jose.

So the question is why are we analysing the impact of external shocks with why, why change and tonnage and not with absolute values.

[Other language spoken]

So thank you for all these these questions.

So tonnage to take the last question is very important because is the most reliable measurement of our international postal flows be the the letter post streams, small packet streams, parcels, EMS.

This is extremely accurately measured because when you you need to send a dispatch to a country abroad, it's the most critical information with your transportation partners.

So these white tonnage I would say frankly speaking is the most reliable indicator of of of all in items.

It's also very interesting, but recently since January 2025, international tracking has become mandatory, which means that a number of growth in the number of items is more visibility dividend than just the number of items being more on demand.

So tonnage, This is why tonnage is so important.

The question about AI system, how we we want to leverage these these AI systems.

Again, I insist on this notion of orchestration.

Imagine every country alone cannot very easily grasp what are the global drivers of of cross-border ecommerce them.

So it's only when you leverage AI putting all information together in this unified data platform that you can really have a global holistic perspective on what is driving the evolution of cross-border ecommerce on different rules and different geographies.

And then it's much more effective for each country individually to leverage its collective intelligence to better design services for the customers and the citizens who want to exchange with other parts of the world.

Then if they had to do these on on an individual and isolated basis.

And for there was another question that I missed the implementation schedule, the implementation schedule.

So we've been showcasing already these during the UPU Congress in Dubai last last year in September 2025.

And we are currently prototyping different AI agents that that, that tackle this orchestration challenge with the purpose of of having countries adopting and scaling up these initiatives during these UPU cycle.

UPU cycle is is for your cycle.

These UPU cycle span the pure 2026 until 2029.

So we are ambitious in scaling up these during these new UPU cycle.

[Other language spoken]

And just for our colleagues from from Nikki, this work that we are undertaking on the Unified Data Platform has actually been through the generosity of the Japanese government.

They have supported us through funding to be able to develop the system and to build it out.

So that that's a very important recognition that we put on the table as well.

We'll come back to if there's no more questions from Nikki.

There's no follow up.

[Other language spoken]

We'll come back to the second question.

And I'm sorry, I've lost track.

[Other language spoken]

I'm sorry to have so many questions.

But I wanted to ask you if, if you have seen other impacts of the US tariff, I mean after September 2025, if you can say something for 2025 or even 2026 if you have some, some data to provide us.

Thank you very much.

So in the by the end of the of this month, we have our new session at the UPU, the full session with the Post Operation Council and Council of Administration and there we will present the new update of these of these research on flows.

The event is broadcasted online.

So you're also most welcome to join these these this session.

What we wanted to do here in the report is to cover a period that goes from from September, sorry, from August 2025 until July 2026 to, to study cases like the US, the European Union, but also the Middle East conflict that were impacting everybody somehow.

So it was not just limited to 1 corridor, 1 route, but it, it was having broader impacts in terms of the, the, the international delivery metrics, not just one 1111 corridor.

And This is why we have chosen these three, these two policy changes, the minimis, this was the big change in the minimis at the end of August 2025 introduced by the US.

There was some new policy with China a few months before this, but the big change was in August 2025 and it was a very sudden change.

And then there was the other big change in terms of these €3 charge by the European Union.

This was introduced in July 2026.

So This is why we end in July 2026.

And in the middle, there was this geopolitical event, this conflict in the Middle East that was highly disruptive for the transportation, particularly of cross-border e-commerce items and international postal items.

So This is why we chose this.

Because we have 3 events with global impact.

And yeah.

[Other language spoken]

The one very last, it's more reflection, but I think a few months ago we had a very brilliant report from UNDDIR and ITU raising the risk that you know, when suddenly we would not have Internet in some parts of the world, then for sure there would be global disruptions.

Do you think that when AI is more and more involved in this, in this postal services, do you think that the post could still not become fully dependent on technology?

Like is the post still able like it was a time a long time ago to to be operational without the technology?

Thank you very much.

That's an excellent question and it is something that is front and centre of a lot of our stakeholders, particularly our our member state governments and their regulators.

We call the term postal resilience and and this is really around both ensuring the capacity of the network to deliver both nationally and on a cross-border basis in the context of either physical threats or risks, for example natural disasters and we've had a spate of those earthquakes.

Climate change is increasingly having an issue, but also, quite importantly, resilience in the context of a highly digitised and connected world, which is also having a bearing on the way postal networks work and, and and then on the digital side of things, the focus is twofold.

1 is cybersecurity as an infrastructure in many places a public infrastructure, there are opportunities for bad actors to target them and we've had instances of this happen.

So there is a very strong focus on building out the resilience of the network both at a national level and a cross-border basis because we have net, you know we have infrastructure that supports the cross-border exchange, a mail as well.

And so this measures been taken to increase cybersecurity awareness capability, Bill, all of these things.

But having said that, there is also in the context of AIA discussion around how do we actually manage particularly agentic AI as it may impact national flows as well as cross-border flows.

Now what you see occurring in in many countries is that there is an adoption of what I would call horizontal AI laws, by which I mean laws that are applicable to all sectors within the economy.

So in the case of the EU, for example, we have the EUAI Act and, and, and, and, and these legislative frameworks typically deal with AI safety issues and, and, and access to the Internet and, and a range of things.

But there is also an ongoing discussion in many countries as to whether some of these laws have to be made more sector specific.

You see this in financial services in particular.

I think the, the, the, the, the sector itself is ahead of the game in, in terms of development of AI related governance.

But there there are other sectors on a similar journey.

And I would argue that the postal sector is likely to be on a similar journey.

And certainly in the context of the UPU and cross-border international mail exchanges, we are seeking to have that dialogue and hopefully end up with a cooperative framework that recognises the disparate development levels of our member states.

But it allows everyone to agree to a baseline set of things that will be protective of the network to deal with AI risks.

So I hope I've answered that particular question for you.

All right.

Are there any questions online, Colleagues online?

I think we've answered the questions from Nikki Tomako.

Do you have any other questions as a follow up?

I, I do not see any other questions online.

I'm very mindful that we've taken the OK, taken the full hour if we're happy to take additional questions if we've got any more, more than bilateral check.

[Other language spoken]

Yeah, please still to think about the workers.

You know, last year I think it was also you debate in Canada, for example, with the the postal workers that were making a strike.

And I mean a bit everywhere around the world we can see also a type of unsatisfaction from the workers that have more and more also addresses to deliver less and less time.

Do you think that your partners, the top leaders that that the satisfaction of the workers is taken enough into account and are you continuing to advocate for it?

Thank you very much.

A short comment, this is good.

[Other language spoken]

Yeah, the answer to that unfortunately is not going to be very short, but I'll try and provide you try and provide you an answer that we would be comfortable giving.

Again, not to address specific member states or or their operators, but generally it is true to say that and, and it's a point I made at the start.

One of the unique features of the postal network and strengths is, is the fact that we have a person at the end point in terms of delivery typically.

But as the the sector transforms, it's adapting to the demands of the market.

It also means that as businesses, the operators do need to look for efficiencies, need to find ways of doing things better, quicker and more cost effective so as to ensure that their financial sustainability is is kept intact.

And this invariably tends to have impacts on, on, on on the workforce.

And most you'd be very surprised when, when you, when you talk to representatives of postal operators, there is a real strong sense of family.

No one wants to take difficult decisions if it's going to be impacting someone badly.

And so there is a conscious attempt at, you know, dialogue and trying to find the appropriate way forward.

And, and, and usually this involves a mix of things, retraining for the newer needs of the business, redeployment and ultimately it's also about upskilling people in a way that it's for next generation services.

So you can find that where operators are diversifying their services, they may redeploy traditional letter meal delivery agents to do something different.

Of course there is a cost to this.

There is time and effort required to achieving this, but generally, you know, enterprises are committed to it, at least that's what we see most of them.

And we work very closely with an association, a global association called Uniglobal, which is the, the confederation of postal worker unions across different member states.

And we try very our very best to inform the the policy discussions to drive a sustainable change so that the impacts on people are minimised.

Thank you think we've come to the end of the conference and thank you so much for being here with us despite the weather.

And I also wish to thank people online for joining us.

Thank you all.