Specific EU legislation exists to promote interoperability and overcome national historic differences in the field of technical specifications for infrastructure (gauge widths, electrification standards and safety and signalling systems).
The old transport challenges remained unchanged as new ones appeared, such as increasing competitiveness which represents a pressure in the global economy, traffic congestion and poor accessibility in the transport market, the increasing oil price and the oil dependency in the transport sector, all these representing hindrances in setting an environmentally friendly transport”, declared Vicenc Pedret – Cusco, Economic Advisor, DG MOVE, at the conference “Railway passenger transport on the sustainable mobility agenda”, organised by Club Feroviar and the Romanian Railway Industry Association (AIF) at Sibiu in March 2012.
Despite the considerable development of the ‘EU acquis’ establishing an internal market for rail transport services, the modal share of rail in intra-EU transport has remained more or less constant since 2000, at around 6%. This relatively poor performance of the rail reflects a low level of efficiency and quality of rail services compared to other transport modes. According to available studies, this situation can be attributed to the presence of several obstacles which hamper market access and expansion of service providers, hindering thereby the internal market for rail ser-vices.
In this context, the main objective of the 4th railway package is to enhance the quality and efficiency of rail services by removing the remaining obstacles, fostering thereby the performance of the railway sector and, hence, competitiveness and growth. The adoption of the 4th Railway Package is expected in December 2012.
These obstacles can be grouped into 4 categories (technical, administrative, institutional and legal barriers), tackled by the initiatives composing the 4th railway package. The initiatives refer to the institutional organisation of the rail market, to addressing legal barriers to access the domestic passenger market and the initiatives on the European Railway Agency (ERA), interoperability and safety.
“To remedy the situation, the 4th Railway Package proposes the evaluation of options such as no legislative changes, but continued progressive implementation of existing legislation (this being option 0), then the first option will be open access competition for domestic services. The second option comprises the first one plus mandatory competitive tendering of PSC for domestic rail; the third option cumulates option 2 plus introduction of framework conditions potentially having a favourable impact on market access and quality of service e.g. full independence of infrastructure managers, better access to facilities and stations, through ticketing, inter-availability of tickets”, pointed out the Economic Advisor.
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