The Bill 3677/08, authored by the Deputy Regis de Oliveira, changes the definition of “letter”, to “all communication sent from person to person, inserted in a closed covering, protected by the confidentiality of mail and addressed to someone”. Currently, “letter” is defined as “mail sent inside a covering or not, in the form of written communication, of administrative, social, commercial, or any other nature, which contains information of specific interest of the addressee”.

Because of that change in the concept of letter, other kinds of mail that are currently considered as letters, are excluded, and therefore are submitted to the states monopoly.

The bill also defines as “printed matter” newspapers, magazines, newsletters, books, advertising material, electronic mail, invoices, bills, trade bills, promissory notes, checkbooks and bank cards.

According to the bill, contracts, communication attached to wares and any mail containing on its covering a message authorizing its opening are also printed matters. Currently, printed matters are the reproductions obtained from materials of current use in the press, published in several identical issues.

Legal disagreements
According to the author of the bill, the legal thesis defended by the Brazilian Association of Distribution Companies (Abraed) in the lawsuit filed at the Supreme Court (STF) against the Law on Postal Services, argues that the Constitution of 1988 determines that the Union has the duty to guarantee the postal service, but not necessarily to exploit it directly, by means of the monopoly of the government company.

For the minister of STF, Ellen Gracie, though, the objective of the entity is that the court gives the word “letter” a meaning which excludes from its concept items that constitute objects of interest of its associated companies. Among those items are magazines, newspapers, newsletters, mail orders, water, electricity and phone bills, and credit cards, checkbooks and bank statements, for example.

The minister of STF highlighted, while voting for the maintenance of the states monopoly on postal services, that the change in the current definition of letter would broaden the revenue of those companies distributing printed matters. “Or be it, disguised in aggression to constitutional services of the free competition and of the freedom of initiative, what the demanding part intends is that the least painful and most rentable part of the mail-delivery market is granted to it”, she argued.

Grouped mail
The bill, authored by the Deputy Regis de Oliveira, also establishes that the transportation of grouped mail can also be made by a private company, but only if the letter or any other document attached to the ware exclusively refers to the content of the covering in which it is included.

The grouped mail is the reunion, in a volume, of objects of the same or of different natures, when at least one of them is subject to the post’s monopoly. Such correspondences are remitted to government or private companies and/or their agencies, branches or representatives.

Currently, the reception, transportation and delivery inside domestic territory, and the dispatch of letters, post cards and of grouped mail to foreign countries are activities that are exclusively exploited by the Union, under a monopoly regime. The Union also holds the monopoly on the production, issuance of stamps and on other formulas of post franchising.

Report - Cristiane Bernardes
Editing - Marcos Rossi
Translation - Positive Idiomas Ltda