The Community of European Railway & Infrastructure Companies (CER) welcomes vote by the European Parliament Committee on Transport & Tourism (TRAN) on the Proposal for a Regulation on the use of railway infrastructure capacity, but the association is dismayed to see the excessively number of implementing and delegated acts.
Progress on this Regulation is essential, and the rail sector acknowledges the efforts of the Rapporteur, Shadow Rapporteurs and all those Members of Parliament involved to reach this agreement. This vote is an important step towards a substantial increase of infrastructure capacity and an optimised capacity management.
This legislation is both timely and necessary and will help the sector optimise capacity and avoid capacity wastes, increase modal shift and help achieve the ambitious goals of the Green Deal and the Smart and Sustainable Mobility Strategy.
In particular, CER welcomes the proposal of a European Railway Platform with the involvement of Railway Undertakings and Applicants in the allocation process and in the development of European frameworks. CER also appreciates the inclusion of sufficient financing from the European Commission and Member States for the implementation of digitalisation of capacity and traffic management, as well as the obligation of multiannual funding provided by the Member States for at least 5 years to be included in the Regulation.
However, CER is dismayed to see the excessively high number of implementing and delegated acts foreseen in the European Parliament report. These additional secondary acts will hamper the implementation of the Regulation.
The rail sector would like to see improvements within the text concerning the following:
- the role of the European Union Agency for Railways (ERA), which should remain within its current scope in Digital Capacity Management (DCM) and the European framework for performance review. The sector is in the best position to develop and coordinate DCM and the European Framework.
- in relation to the introduction of socio-economic and environmental criteria to be applied in case of scarce infrastructure capacity, further work should be undertaken to define and test the criteria.
- the role of the Regulatory Bodies (RBs) and the European Network of Rail Regulatory Bodies (ENRRB) should remain limited to an ex-post supervisory intervention, excluding ex-ante approvals that will further delay processes.
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