Archive image. — © MARC HERREMANS – MEDIAHUIS
PPP and Bpost have reached an agreement to avoid a lawsuit, Bpost announced before the stock market on Wednesday. It has been agreed that bpost will pay its competitor “an agreed amount”, thus “avoiding long and expensive legal proceedings”, it said. The amount of that amount was not disclosed.
The issue is related to the newspaper contract. The federal government decided at the end of last year not to award the newspaper contract for the following years. PPP came out on top in the tender and was thus entitled to tens of millions of euros in subsidies. The current newspaper contract was extended by six months, for which Bpost will receive a subsidy of 75 million euros.
PPP initiated legal proceedings before the corporate court in Brussels to challenge that subsidy. According to the company, this is illegal state aid and the aid must be stopped, under penalty of a penalty of 494,000 euros per day.
With the agreement between PPP and Bpost, both parties also want to “devote their energy to the development of their activities and especially to the negotiations with publishers on the conditions for the distribution of newspapers and magazines from July 1, 2024”, it says.