EU: Deutsche Post must repay up to 1 billion euros in state aid

Brussels (dpa) - Deutsche Post, Germany‘s former postal monopolist, should give back up to 1 billion euros (1.3 billion dollars) of illegal state aid it received from German authorities, the European Union‘s executive ruled on Wednesday.

The European Commission is the EU‘s highest competition authority and is tasked with policing the bloc‘s strict rules limiting state aid.

In a statement, it said that Deutsche Post unduly benefited "from the combination of high regulated prices and pension relief subsidies" that were granted to it by German authorities.

As such, it should give back "incompatible aid in the range of 500 million euros to 1 billion euros," the commission said.

However, the EU executive spared Deutsche Post from the obligation to give back 5.6 billion euros it received from 1990 to 1995, finding that the sum represented adequate compensation for providing a universal postal service, and thus did not breach EU rules.

The commission also ordered Belgium‘s postal incumbent, Bpost, to give back 417 million euros to the Belgian state, but cleared a 3.8-billion-euro pension relief that the company also benefited from.

In parallel, the Brussels-based body cleared state aid worth 1.9 billion euros for France‘s La Poste and 52 million euros for Greece‘s Hellenic Post, finding no breach of EU rules. dpa alv mat Author: Alvise Armellini