Postal company PostNL faces a fine of up to €2m for treating its competitors unfairly by charging them more for delivery.

A court in Rotterdam has given PostNL one week to unify its charges or be fined €200,000 a day, up to a maximum of €2m.

PostNL is responsible for 90% of the Dutch business delivery market and has a legal obligation to charge its competitors the same as ordinary business companies for bulk delivery.

However, since January, the company has charged an additional 10 cents for delivering letters from Van Straaten Post and Intrapost. PostNL said the fact that the packages had two addresses – that of the destination customer and the postal company – made them more expensive to process.

Van Straaten Post and Intrapost complained to the consumer and competition authority ACM which found in their favour. The court also said that processing ‘the very few’ packages which took more time to deal with did not justify the extra cost.

‘PostNL is the only company which is capable of delivery five days a week, all over the Netherlands,’ the ACM said. ‘Other providers should have access to that network for a reasonable fee.’