It is not news anymore for those working in the rail transport area that the First Railway Package, adopted in 2001 and which includes three directives on the development of community railways, authorisation of railway companies, allocation of rail infrastructure capacities, rail infrastructure charges and safety certification, aimed to revive the railway sector and was a first step towards the development of an integrated European rail area and the establishment of a safe financial structure.
The news is, however, the fact that the provisions of this package have not been fully applied by member states, although the implementation deadline was established for 2003. For this breach of the First Railway Package, on June 17, the European Parliament asked the European Commission to take a firm stand, legally, if necessary, against the “lazy” member states. The Commission conformed to the EP’s request and on the 24th of June it decided to institute proceedings against 13 countries, Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain at the European Court of Justice.
The reasons have been detailed for each member state, but vary in the breach of EU legislation in different ways, often by failure to ensure sufficient independence to the railway infrastructure manager, the improper implementation of the dispositions on infrastructure access charges or failure to establish an independent regulatory body. Due to this final reason, Romania escaped by the skin of one’s teeth because the Railway supervisory council was transferred through Emergency Ordinance from the authority of the Romanian Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure to that of the General Secretariat of the Government on June 4. The reason which determined the Romanian authorities to take a stand aimed to finalize the process of levelling to the requirements included in the action initiated by the European Commission in 2008 concerning the implementation of the directives included in the First Railway Package.
“The Member State through the Regulatory Body should conduct an efficient and transparent analysis before making a decision!!! The Regulatory Body, independent of all railway players, is the one which, weighing all aspects and observing the legislative framework, decides to limit or grant access to the national railway infrastructure to other non-contracted public service operators”, declared Carmen Filipescu, International Affairs Manager within CFR Călători in an interview on the efficiency of international passenger transport liberalisation.
The European Parliament criticised the Commission
Recently, on June 17, the European Parliament (EP) criticised the Commission for not having earlier imposed severe sanctions to the member states which failed to correctly implement the provisions of the First Railway Package “seeing as the directives included in the first railway package should have been transposed to national legislations by 2003 and the Commission had waited until June 2008 to initiate the proceedings in court against these member states for having breached the community law, for the improper or incomplete implementation of the first railway package”, shows the EP report.
Having regard to the Commission’s second report on the monitoring of the railway market evolution, the percentage of the railway sector in transportation has not increased, but only stabilized to the low level of almost 10% of the railway freight transport market and less than 7% for the railway passenger transport in 2002. For this reason, the Parliament “regrets that most member states, 22 respectively, have not correspondingly implemented the three Directives and consider that this failure has hindered the growth of rail transport percentage among transport services in general”. Consequently, the EP requests the Commission to publish correct comprehensive information concerning the elements which have not been completely implemented in each member state, especially those related to the insufficient establishment of independent regulatory bodies, as well as the lack of implementation of the dispositions concerning the railway infrastructure access charges; moreover, the EP calls on the Commission to inform the Parliament on the different legal interpretations of the Commission and of the member states regarding the independence of the infrastructure managers. The role of the Regulatory Body becomes very important as it contributes to the maintenance of a balance between the operators providing public services and those providing strictly commercial services, in situations such as the allocation of routes (certain intervals can be more profitable) or the passenger rights, aspects for which most of the East European EU members have required derogation or postponement of implementation. “To ensure a successful liberalisation, we have to provide a satisfactory level of infrastructure financing, the infrastructure access charges should be established to a level similar to those of the road infrastructure access, public services should be correspondingly compensated and the historic debt reduced to an easily manageable level. To this end, independent regulatory bodies play a key role in the implementation of the European and national legislation”, declared Johannes Ludewig, Executive Director CER in an interview previously published in Railway Pro.
by Elena Ilie
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