COPENHAGEN — Epistolophobes rejoice! On Dec. 30, Denmark’s national postal authority PostNord will stop delivering paper letters, concluding a service first offered in 1624. The decision to sunset the delivery of physical missives is a pragmatic one: PostNord reported an operating deficit of 428 million krone — or €57 million — last year. Given the volume of physical missives processed has decreased by over 90 percent since 2000, ending the service is a clear cost-cutting decision. “PostNord Denmark has a long history in which letters have been an important part, but with Denmark being one of the most digitalized countries in the world, most of the Danes no longer send physical letters,” said Andreas Brethvad, the company’s director of public affairs and communications. The postal authority will now pivot to focus on the delivery of e-commerce parcels instead — a service used by eight out of every 10 Danes who routinely shop online. However, Danish law guarantees citizens have the right to send and receive physical letters. So, with PostNord no longer offering the service, shipping and distribution company Dao will be stepping in. From January on, Danes wishing to send letters at home or abroad will have to hand them in at the private company’s shops — which already processed 30 million missives this year — and affix them with its corporate stamps. Dao said it’s “excited” to provide the service, for which the company is set to receive 110 million krone (€14.7 million) in government subsidies. And in a post on its corporate website, the parcel processing group highlights new data that suggests physical correspondence is experiencing a revival among younger Danes who are embracing pen-and-paper communication. The company now aims to capitalize on this trend by lowering letter delivery fees and ramping up its processing capacity to up to 80 million letters next year. “Many believe that letters are disappearing, but they still play an important role,” said Dao Sales Director Lars Balsby, who stressed they seek to provide the service for the foreseeable future. “We will be here tomorrow, in five years, and in 10 years.” END OF AN ERA PostNord’s decision to stop its physical mail delivery service means the phaseout of 1,500 jobs. It also spells the end for Denmark’s 1,500 red postboxes. Brethvad said PostNord is sensitive to the fact that the postboxes are an iconic part of Danish heritage. Earlier this month, 1,000 of them were sold off in a special sale, and an additional 200 will be auctioned off in January, with all proceeds going to charities supporting children affected by crisis situations around the world. PostNord’s decision to stop its physical mail delivery service means the phaseout of 1,500 jobs. It also spells the end for Denmark’s 1,500 red postboxes. | Kristian Tuxen Ladegaard Berg/NurPhoto via Getty Images The remaining boxes will be preserved to “serve new, meaningful purposes,” Brethvad explained. And while that future use is yet to be determined, the successful conversion of unused telephone boxes into pop-up libraries in places like the U.K. and Sweden demonstrates that defunct on-street infrastructure can, indeed, have a successful second act. Denmark isn’t the only EU country revising the way it handles mail, though. Across Europe, postal authorities are trying to cut costs by outsourcing or eliminating services and slashing jobs. After six decades, Deutsche Post scrapped its next-day air mail delivery service in Germany last year and is currently laying off thousands of workers. Poland’s Poczta Polska is similarly slashing thousands of jobs in a bid to reduce losses. With postal services hard-pressed to cut costs, mailboxes and letter-bearing postal workers could eventually go the way of the pigeon post Paris relied on during the Franco-Prussian War, or the pneumatic mail service that whooshed messages across Prague until 2002.

Postal services in Europe will stop sending parcels to the United States as new tariffs on the import of goods worth less than $800 kick in at the end of the month. U.S. President Donald Trump last month scrapped a long-standing tax exemption on the import of low value goods known as “de minimis” from Aug. 29 onwards via an executive order. National post services in France, Spain, Germany and the U.K. have all said they would temporarily suspend their shipment services to the U.S. as of next week to prepare for the new measures. Belgian postal service Bpost already stopped shipping parcels to the U.S. on Friday, the company announced in a statement. The suspensions — which will not affect letters or small parcels worth less than $100 in many countries — will start on Monday and last until the postal services find practical solutions. “The suspension will be maintained for the time strictly necessary to adopt the necessary operational measures to meet the new obligations of the United States,” the Spanish national postal service Correos said on Friday. The U.K.’s Royal Mail said it hoped the interruption would only last a couple of days after which it would have “a new system up and running,” the BBC reported. Some services blamed the U.S. for not giving them enough time to prepare for the new rules. “Despite discussions with the U.S. customs services, no time was granted to postal operators to organize themselves and ensure the necessary IT developments for compliance with the new established rules,” France’s La Post said, according to reports in Le Monde. The tariffs on small parcels come just as the U.S. and the European Union shook hands on a new trade deal to end months of escalating tensions over tariffs between the two blocs.

SOFIA — Has Bulgaria slashed key state-controlled prices to massage down inflation numbers and help it qualify for euro membership? In April, the country announced (rather surreptitiously) a highly unexpected 82.8 percent cut in daily fees for hospital treatment. Even the presenters on state TV confessed the reasons behind the move were a mystery. So what is the Bulgarian government up to? Sofia is now on track to receive a green light next month to adopt the European single currency on Jan. 1, 2026, but only passed the inflation test by the skin of its teeth — and the plunging health costs played a vital role in that. Those reduced healthcare costs have shifted attention to Bulgaria’s control over prices set at the state level and how those impact consumer price indices. “The only reason Bulgaria has qualified is, if you look at the inflation data, due to state-administered prices,” a former Bulgarian government official familiar with the data told POLITICO. “It is well known that statistical data was adjusted to show results more favorable than reality — especially in sectors like postal services, transport and healthcare.” While healthcare is the big factor, rail fares were also cut by over 9 percent, and postage costs were reduced by nearly as much. In all, the reductions in state-set prices helped push the harmonized index of consumer prices [HICP] down by 1.2 percentage points in April compared with March, bringing Bulgaria within the required limits. Steve Hanke, a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University and the economist who designed Bulgaria’s currency board in the late 1990s, said the data raised red flags. “I think there’s a high probability that [the inflation data] has been manipulated,” Hanke told POLITICO in emailed comments. “Given my experience as an advisor to the president of Bulgaria (1997–2002) and my observations of the machinations surrounding Bulgaria’s application to formally enter the eurozone, I would not trust inflation data that have been thrown up as far as I could throw them.” Any discussion of the data used to bind the former Soviet satellite more tightly to the heart of the EU quickly becomes politically charged. Pro-Kremlin, anti-EU politicians have long accused the administration of cooking the books to rush the country into the eurozone before it is ready, running the risk of importing western European prices. The European Commission notes the critical role of state-set prices in meeting the inflation target. | Vassil Donev/EFE via EPA Bulgaria’s government has said the sudden shift in the hospital prices was unrelated to euro convergence, but technocrats, economists and even — most importantly — the European Commission note the critical role of state-set prices in meeting the inflation target. MAKING THE GRADE To make the grade for single currency convergence, Bulgarian inflation was required to fall within 1.5 percentage points of the average of the three EU countries with the lowest inflation rates. Economists estimate that the drop in hospital prices alone subtracted 0.89 percentage points from the overall 12-month inflation rate, which came in at 2.7 percent, narrowly clearing the threshold for euro entry (it was in fact just below the reference value of 2.8 percent for the price stability criterion.) The European Commission openly acknowledges the importance of April’s reduction in the cost of a daily hospital stay from 5.8 leva (€2.97) to 1 lev, given its weight in the core index of prices. “The drop in April 2025 of the annual HICP inflation rate was largely due to a substantial reduction in hospital fees,” the European Commission said in its convergence report on Bulgaria. “In April, hospital fees were reduced from 5.8 BGN to 1 BGN, that led to 2.9 percentage points decline in annual services inflation.” Bulgaria has long been seen as a strong contender for euro membership due to its tight budgets and the fact its currency is pegged to the euro under the strong management of a currency board established in 1997. Inflation, however, has recently been a bugbear. “The pick-up in inflation in Bulgaria in 2025 is of a temporary nature and mainly reflects increases in January 2025 in a mix of taxes and administered prices, partially offset by the lowered hospital fees in April,” the European Commission added. Overall, Bulgaria’s official announcement of HICP inflation for April 2025 put the average rate for May 2024 to April 2025 at 2.7 percent compared with the same period 12 months earlier. Breaking the figures down by sector, prices for health services fell by more than any other category, dropping 11.5 percent. FUNDING THE HOSPITALS Nobody is disputing the importance of the lower hospital costs in bringing down the inflation numbers, given their weighting in the index. Vassil Donev/EFE via EPA The question is what that means in practical terms, and whether the 82.8 percent cut is an entirely painless change for Bulgarian hospitals that are often in a poor state of repair. The sums involved are modest — particularly relative to their weight in the inflation index — but they still leave gaps that need to be filled. At a public level, Bulgaria has not explained the rationale for slashing the hospital fee. When contacted by POLITICO, the Bulgarian health ministry said it “supports all policies aimed at reducing the financial burden of healthcare services on households,” noting that the initiative aligns with recommendations from the Council of the EU. In a letter sent to the health ministry after the fee was cut, a number of medical associations clubbed together to urge the government to reverse its decision, stating they opposed the change and the manner in which it was imposed. “We understand from media reports that the reduction in the [hospital stay] fee is being presented as a measure to improve access to healthcare. However, it does not address the structural problems within the system and carries a number of serious risks,” the letter said. It added that the fee “although symbolic, is a source of revenue for medical facilities, of particular importance for [those in] remote areas.” For example, for St. Ekaterina University Hospital in Sofia, the annual loss in revenue from the price drop is estimated at around 40,000 leva (€20,451) according to Bulgarian media. In fact, Bulgaria’s health system is so inadequate that many people already have to pay out of pocket. “At 34 percent [of all health costs], out-of-pocket payments, primarily for pharmaceuticals and direct payments for services not in the benefits package, are the highest in the EU, where the average is 15 percent,” the OECD said in a 2023 country report. ‘DISINFORMATION AND RUMORS’ Bulgaria’s finance ministry pushed back strongly against claims that hospital price adjustments were motivated by euro adoption targets, noting it “has always been a reliable partner in providing statistical financial information and will not allow any disinformation and rumors to undermine the authority of the institutions in Bulgaria.” A spokesman for the National Statistical Institute added that “the NSI only provides statistical data, while decisions are made by other institutions.” Bulgaria’s health system is so inadequate that many people already have to pay out of pocket. | Vassil Donev/EFE via EPA Atanas Pekanov, an economist and a former deputy prime minister in Bulgaria’s caretaker government, said state pricing was not unusual. “There are state-controlled prices in many EU countries. These are not prices that were until recently market-based, and now all of a sudden the state controls them. These are the services [whose prices] the state has always decided,” he told POLITICO. He said that Bulgaria might have met the criteria earlier if inflation in other euro countries had not been artificially capped via emergency measures. “At least we haven’t received any warning or recommendation by European institutions that, well, you are treating your debt in some hidden way,” Pekanov said in a separate exchange. Still, Hanke, who designed the Bulgarian currency board, was wary of Sofia’s inflation claims. He previously developed a formula to estimate the optimal growth rate of the money supply needed to maintain price stability. That benchmark, in Bulgaria’s case, is currently around 6.3 percent. “Since April 2023, Bulgaria’s annual money supply growth rate has been well above 6.3 percent per year. Given the elevated growth rate of the money supply, it looks like Bulgaria’s inflation data have been doctored to look somewhat better (read: lower) than true inflation measures would indicate,” Hanke said. The final decision on Bulgaria’s accession — including setting the conversion rate — is expected to be taken by the Council on July 8. Boryana Dzhambazova contributed reporting.