Fourth Railway Package: Commission proposal on governance needs a re-write -
Technical Pillar should be fast-tracked.
The Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER) appreciates that the European Parliament’s TRAN Committee has organised a hearing on 7 May on the European Commission proposal for a Fourth Railway Package. In this context, CER highlighted that there are strong and weak aspects of the package, both on the proposals amending Directive 2012/34 and Regulation 1370/2007, as well as on the proposals amending the ERA regulation and the directives on rail interoperability and safety.
Unfortunately, the Commission’s proposal on governance is not based on an objective and reliable analysis of its consequences, as any independent review of the relevant Impact Assessment would show. The proposals regarding Public Service Obligations also contain a number of questionable aspects which do not seem to be fully justified.
“Any further legislative proposal must have a solid analytical base”, saidCER Chairman Mauro Moretti, “and the Impact Assessment accompanying the governance proposal does not for a number of reasons: the existing literature is largely ignored, available evidence is presented in a biased way and the costs of vertical separation are not properly accounted for. We need a different approach. What is our goal? We need to open our national markets and we want to create a genuine single European market. Therefore we propose to strengthen Regulatory Bodies and we support the creation of a genuine EU network of national Regulatory Bodies for cross border services.
“We support the full liberalisation of domestic passenger markets for open-access services allowed everywhere, while at the same time we need to carefully calibrate the interactions between open access and PSO services, in the understanding that the way in which competent authorities design PSO services must respond to the needs of their regions and their citizens. All in all we need to produce good legislation, which can realistically be the ground on which railways can fulfil the European Commission’s long-term targets of the 2011 White Paper.”
On the so called ‘Technical Pillar’, the railway sector urges the legislators to process as quickly as possible the legislation on the European Railway Agency (ERA), interoperability and safety. Each minute of delay costs money. It is estimated that today 1.2 billion euros’ worth of railway vehicles are parked somewhere in Europe, waiting for national administrations to put their stamp of approval on vehicle authorizations and safety certifications. Each year the European railway sector spends in these processes as much as the air sector worldwide – around half a billion euro. It is imperative that legislators discuss the text, vote it and implement it without further hesitations. And if this can happen faster than for the other parts of the fourth package, a splitting of the package would become an enabling factor for a more efficient railway sector, without any prejudice to necessary work on market opening which can proceed in parallel.
CER appreciates the work that National Safety Authorities (NSAs) do today to guarantee the highest safety standards for the railways, and shares the view that centralization of competences on ERA must be a gradual process. This is why CER suggests the insertion in the legislative text of a transitory phase in which each applicant would have the option to ask ERA to do the job or the relevant NSA. If the applicant wants to run international services then it may be convenient to ask ERA to coordinate the process. If the applicant wants to run only national services, then it may be more practical for that applicant to have the relevant NSA as its direct interlocutor.
CER Executive Director Libor Lochman states:“If you really want to open the market, if you really want to help the rail sector to improve its performance and cost efficiency, then a quick and pragmatic reading of the Technical Pillar would do the job: it would allow all types of railway undertakings to get their vehicles faster and at more reasonable prices, new international traffic to grow, and the rail system to be more cost efficient.”
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Over the next 10 years we will witness a complete infrastructure overhaul in the (Middle East) region with every major city planning a state-of the art metro system, each country creating a national network and the GCC rail project underway. Investment is key... read more
HERE
Qatar estimates $38 billion in rail project returns over 20 yearsThe Middle East has over $156 Billion invested in current railway projects and a further $42 billion planned for the next 12 months.
There will be $38 billion worth of new projects open to the rail industry over the next 20 years in rail-related projects in Qatar alone - according to the CEO of Qatar Railways, a past attendee of Middle East Rail.
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The Queen’s Speech 2013 took place at 11.30am on 8 May 2013. In the speech, the Queen set out the government’s proposed legislative programme for the year ahead. This page provides links to the full text of the Queen’s Speech 2013, background briefing notes on the speech and related news from across government.
Go to GOV.UK for more detailed coverage....
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