The Commission has proposed a series of amendments of the Directive on Interoperability; therefore new provisions will be introduced consisting in new definitions, the concept of vehicle authorization for placing on the market, as well as new provisions on registers. The Commission seeks to clarify the existing provisions regarding the scope of the directive, the application of TSIs to existing systems, derogations from TSIs, deficiencies of TSIs and the applicability of national regulations.
Future revisions of TSIs should also simplify the regulatory environment, ensuring the relevance, effectiveness and proportionality of railway legislation. For example, greater use of voluntary European standards will be considered.
The Commission proposes clarifications regarding the application of TSIs when
existing subsystems are renewed or upgraded. In the same package, the Commission emphasizes the importance of the role and correct functioning of notified bodies by aligning the interoperability legislation with the new legislative framework for the marketing of products.
The fourth package also addresses the difficulties experienced in the current vehicle authorisation process, by introducing the notion of a single vehicle authorisation for placing on the market which will be valid throughout the European Union. The proposals are currently debated by the Commission and the Parliament.
The work carried out by the Commission departments and the European Railway Agency in 2010 allowed all players to come to an agreed understanding of the provisions of this Directive on the placing into service of rail vehicles. This led to the Commission Recommendation of 29 March 2011 on the authorisation for the placing in service of structural subsystems and vehicles under Directive 2008/57/EC.
However, in the course of that work new issues have emerged, such as difficulties with the implementation of Common Safety Methods on risk assessment and the mapping of safety hazards in TSIs in order to allow for the systematic use of TSIs rather than national rules. For this reason, in September 2011 the Commission departments set up a Task Force bringing together all those concerned in order to analyse the problems encountered by the stakeholders during the authorisation process and identify areas for further improvement.
The Task Force identified three types of problems: the European rail legislation is not always properly applied, the European rail legislation is not always correctly understood and the EU rail legislation can be improved. Therefore, in addition to closer monitoring of the implementation of EU rail legislation and wider dissemination and training activities, a revision of the EU process for the placing in service of vehicles is needed. This issue is addressed by the Commission in its fourth package proposals. Other obstacles are the lack of transparency of national legal frameworks for vehicle authorisation and the lack of public availability of national rules. The problem of preserving national rules that are redundant or are in conflict with the TSIs should also be approached more carefully by member states, first, and then by ERA.
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