At the beginning of June, the Commission adopted a staff working paper that brings forward ideas for developing transport security policy at EU level. In particular, it focuses attention on the deficit of EU policy relating to land transport security.
In the fields of aviation security and maritime security EU policy has deve-loped rapidly following the events of 11 September 2001. In particular, the Commission has built upon the international standards of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the International Maritime Organization (IMO) – the UN bodies primarily responsible for aviation and maritime law, respectively. This has resulted in the EU having high levels of aviation and maritime security that are applied coherently and seamlessly throughout the EU.
The working paper of the Commission firstly advocates that there should be an EU forum for land transport security that can mirror the existing fora in the aviation and maritime security, in particular in order to be able to address the cross-border challenges. Thus, it proposes the creation of an Advisory Group for Land Transport Security made of national policy experts from both transport and security/justice administrations. This would be complemented by a parallel stakeholder group to allow industry to have its voice heard in the policy development process. The two groups would then discuss with the Commission policy options for ensuring a balanced development of EU policy for land transport security. The set up of the Committee is scheduled for the second half of 2012 and starting with 2013, the Committee will be capable to present its initiatives.
The staff working paper acknowledges that security policy in the aviation and maritime sectors is developing satisfactorily, thanks to appropriate mechanisms ensuring that legislative requirements receive feedback to allow revision on a continuous basis. However, although public transport (tram, bus, metro), rail and high-speed rail transport are the most important modes of passenger transport (80,000 million passenger trips per year) and that road, rail and inland waterways transport huge quantities of freight both within and to/from the EU, there is today no coherent approach to land transport security in the EU. This needs to change. Compared with aviation and maritime transport, land has seen the greatest number of incidents and fatalities from terrorist incidents in the past decade. Meanwhile, the successful expansion of high-speed rail is increasing the number of cross-border journeys. Furthermore, security issues such as cargo theft from road hauliers or metal theft from the rail sector are now large-scale problems across the EU.
The Commission does not envisage prescriptive rules for security for the land transport sector. Land transport covers a wide range of transport operations and widely differing transport operators. The needs and threats faced by each may vary considerably and so a “one-size-fits-all” solution is not appropriate.
It would rather be desirable to consider a framework of general security for transport operators, such as security programmes, security awareness training and exercises, contingency and recovery planning. The detailed requirements would be left to transport operators to develop, in conjunction with the national or local legislators. In this way, each transport operator would have an appropriate level of security preparedness, proportionate to the risks faced by their operations.
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