On 7 November 2025, the PostEurop Innovation Forum and the European Commission brought together postal operators, the Universal Postal Union (UPU), the International Post Corporation (IPC) and ecosystem partners in Brussels for a dedicated workshop on innovation, EU funding and collaborative implementation. The message was clear: postal innovation is not an isolated exercise. It is a strategic response to Europe’s green, digital and social ambitions, and a key enabler of EU public-interest objectives.
Across the European Union, postal operators manage one of the continent’s most extensive and trusted infrastructures: hundreds of thousands of access points, millions of employees and billions of items handled annually. This network already delivers essential public value, from financial inclusion to connectivity in rural and remote regions. With the right EU policy framework and funding instruments, it can also become a powerful operational platform for implementing the Green Deal, the Digital Europe agenda and broader social cohesion policies.
The European Commission opened the workshop by presenting the forthcoming European Competitiveness Fund, a major initiative designed to provide a more coherent, flexible and strategic investment journey for Europe’s leading sectors. By reducing fragmentation between programmes and bridging the “valley of death” between pilots and scale-up, the Fund aims to accelerate clean transition, digital leadership and resilience. For the postal sector, this is a clear request from the EU: bring forward mature, scalable projects that align innovation with European priorities and deliver concrete outcomes for citizens and businesses.
Smarter Postal Operations – AI & Automation
Postal operators such as PostNord, La Poste Groupe and CTT – Correios de Portugal are moving from experiments to industrial deployment of artificial intelligence. Digital twins of sorting centres, intelligent terminals, predictive delivery windows, computer vision for quality control and generative AI assistants are already enhancing resilience, operational efficiency and customer experience. The message to EU institutions: postal AI is mature, scalable and ready for partnership under EU digital policy frameworks.
Greener, Leaner, Closer – Sustainable Mobility & Circular Logistics
Aligned directly with the EU’s Green Deal and net-zero goals, Austrian Post, PostNL and Deutsche Post DHL presented ambitious decarbonisation pathways, electrified delivery fleets, renewable-powered buildings and rapidly growing parcel shop and locker networks. Circular packaging and reusable containers are moving from pilots to mainstream operations. These initiatives demonstrate how postal logistics can act as a backbone of low-carbon, resource-efficient urban and rural ecosystems, supporting EU climate and circular-economy commitments.
From Counters to Platforms – Digital Transformation & Customer Experience
Postal operaters connected digital innovation with EU priorities on more user-centric public services. La Poste’s Customer Experience Hub, Omniva’s crowd-delivery model and Pošta Slovenije’s AI-enabled contact channels illustrate how post offices are becoming digitally integrated citizen platforms, bridging physical and digital services. Real-time feedback, NPS data and digital interactions feed unified platforms that continuously improve quality across networks—an approach fully aligned with the EU’s ambition for accessible, inclusive digital public services.
The UPU’s closing keynote added a global perspective. Presenting the concept of “Postal Agentic AI for Resilient Societies”, the UPU highlighted how 192 national networks can cooperate through unified data architectures and AI agents to support health systems, elderly care, disaster response and social inclusion. For Europe, this global vision aligns closely with the EU’s own ambitions for resilience, digital sovereignty and inclusive innovation, offering new opportunities for cooperation.
A clear narrative emerges: postal operators are not debating whether they should innovate. They are already innovating in ways that directly support EU policies. The next step is to connect this innovation capacity more systematically with European funding and policy frameworks. The European Competitiveness Fund and other EU instruments can serve as bridges between the Union’s strategic priorities and the concrete innovation projects that posts are ready to deliver in cities, towns and villages across the continent.
Deepening cooperation between the European Commission and the postal sector means shifting from ad hoc participation in calls to a more strategic, long-term partnership. This could include coordinated pipelines of EU-aligned projects, cross-border testbeds for AI and automation, shared standards for data and interoperability, and integrated EU approaches to circular logistics and sustainable mobility. IPC and the UPU can help ensure that European pilots are designed with global scalability, competitiveness and resilience in mind.
As highlighted during the workshop, Carlos Bhatt, PhD, Chair of the PostEurop Innovation Forum and Director of Innovation at CTT – Portugal Post, stressed that the EU should recognise postal networks as strategic assets in the green and digital transitions. He underlined that PostEurop members stand ready to co-design and implement projects that combine operational excellence with public value: cleaner fleets, smarter operations, more inclusive digital services and stronger societal resilience. According to Bhatt, the Brussels workshop was an important step; the next step is turning this shared EU–postal ambition into concrete, collaborative projects under the European Competitiveness Fund and beyond.
