It has been quite a while since the EU split over a piece of legislation, but there are signs that this blissful state is about to end. The past few months of peace were, after all, caused by the uncertainty surrounding the next French president. Who would succeed tired Jacques Chirac? Just how obstructive and protectionist would his successor be?

Since Nicholas Sarkozy triumphed in from last week’s election, much of that uncertainty has now been removed. And while it is too early for France’s partners to reopen negotiations on sensitive dossiers quite yet, you can hear the legislative machine creaking back into action all over Brussels.

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A politician keen to maintain popular support and enjoy a quiet life is not generally advised to pick a fight with postmen.
For a start, there are quite a lot of them - about 5m people are employed by postal groups in the European Union. They are also highly organised, with the French postal workers� union boasting particularly strong political influence.
Postmen are also popular, in an old-fashioned, gentle kind of way. Everyone, after all, loves to get a letter, and some of that feeling surely rubs off on the long-suffering men and women who cycle around town in the early-morning drizzle to deliver you a precious piece of mail.
Yet Charlie McCreevy is undaunted. Later this month, the EU internal market commissioner is expected to table a proposal that will introduce full and unlimited competition into the Union’s market for postal services. As the FT reported last week, the proposal will dismantle the last "reserved area" in which the big national postal groups retain a monopoly - the market for delivering mail weighing less than 50 grammes.

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