New EU rules, set through the final vote of the European Parliament on July 3, on the recast of the First Railway Package, allow more competition on the European rail market. The new rules are expected to become effective by the end of the year and approach three major problems in the market.
The first problem is strengthening the power of national regulators, improving the framework for investment in rail and the third, ensuring fair access to rail infrastructure and rail related services. They are a direct response to many complaints from operators in recent years.
By December 2012, the European Commission will propose separate legislation to open the way to liberalising passenger transport on EU member states’ domestic networks.
To facilitate better use of EU rail networks, the vote of the Parliament clarified competition rules for rail transport firms and rail infrastructure managers. These rules aim to stimulate the supply of international freight and passenger services and to improve their quality. Moreover, according to the adopted provisions, independent regulators will see that competition is fair.
“It took us two years of difficult negotiations (…) to guarantee better competition and lay solid foundations for infrastructure funding”, said rapporteur Debora Serracchiani, the initiator of the recast procedure, during the debate.
Separate and transparent accounting by rail transport firms and infrastructure ma-
nagers should henceforth prevent any illegal transfer of public funds between these entities, even if they belong to the same holding company. The European Parliament sees this as vital to prevent distortions of competition among rail transport firms, along with equal access to train paths and service facilities such as maintenance workshops and stations for all undertakings, public or private.
In the event of disputes, independent national rail regulators will ensure that the rules are enforced. Collaboration among regulators will be overseen by the European Commission, which must assess, within two years, the desirability of establishing a European regulator.
The European railway companies, through their common voice, CER, “regret that adequate financing of infrastructure managers lies under a “may” clause in the final text. Also, ETCS differentiated charging has not been properly treated and it is likely to pena-lize the majority of railway undertakings running on non-ETCS-equipped lines”.
“All in all CER welcomes the agreement. At the same time, we have to say that in many cases the text could have been improved even further if only more attention had been paid to details. We look forward with confidence to the next discussion rounds on future legislation”, said Libor Lochman, CER Executive Director.
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