Competitive disadvantage

The claimant was part of the TNT Group which provided postal distribution services for business mail.

The interested party was Royal Mail Group Ltd the sole universal postal service provider in the UK.

The claim related to “access services”: access by other postal operators or users of postal services to Royal Mail’s postal network.

Supplies of postal services are exempt from VAT under EU law. In the UK this exemption is granted only to the Royal Mail; TNT wished to apply for judicial review of whether the situation was consistent with EU law.

It argued that according to the ruling of the European Court of Justice in R (on the application of TNT Post UK Ltd) v CRC (Case C-357/07) [2009] STC 1438 the exemption was confined to services that fell strictly within the description of universal postal services of which access services were...