the EU commission adopts the fourth railway package



Today the EU commission has adopted the measures that constitute so-called the fourth railway package. "The European railroads - it has emphasized Siim Kallas, vice president of the Commission and responsible for transport - are being approached to a crucial moment. In front of the inactivity or to the decline of the railway market in many European Countries the choice to complete is simple. We can adopt now the drastic decisions necessary in order to restructure the European railway market to the aim to encourage the innovation and the supply of better services. And in this case the railroads will be able to return to grow for the benefit of the citizens, of the enterprises and the atmosphere. Or we can feed the other railroad: to accept the irreversible decline towards an Europe in which the railroads they constitute a toy of luxury for little rich Countries, but they are economically indefensible in the majority of the others date the sparsity of public funds available".

The proposed new of the EU commission are centralized on four withins. First it regards the increment of the efficiency of the norms and the homologations: with the objective to reduce the administrative expenses of the railway enterprises and to favor the income of new operators on the market, the Commission has proposed that the European Railway Agency becomes the "only door" for the release of the authorization to the breaking in of the vehicles on the market and the Pan-EU certificate of safety of the operators. "Today - it has remembered the Commission - the authorizations of the vehicles and the certificates of safety are released by the single Member States. The proposed measures would afford to reduce of 20% are the times necessary to a new railway enterprise in order to enter on the market that the cost and the duration of the procedure of authorization of the rotabile material, with a previewed total saving for the enterprises of the order of 500 million euros within 2025".

Moreover, to the aim to promote the innovation and the efficiency and to guarantee a greater added value to the investments in the field, the Commission has proposed to open to new operators and services national the rail shipment of passengers to pass from December 2019. "The railway enterprises - it has explained the Commission - will be able to offer to services of national transport of passengers for railroad in all the EU offering commercial services on competitive base or introducing offered for contracts of public service in the rail shipment, that they cover the great part of the railway ways in EU (90%) and for which the award by means of contest will be been profitable obligatory. The proposals will guarantee luminosityen benefits to the passengers in terms of better services and greater choice and, associated to the structural reforms, would have to assure within 2035 more than 40 billion euros than financial benefits to the citizens and the enterprises, besides the supply, second the esteem of the Commission, about 16 billion additional of km/passeggero". "The markets of national transport of passengers - it has found Brussels - remain in great part closed. Only Sweden and the United Kingdom have opened the relative markets integrally while Austria, Italy, Czech Republic and Low Countries have been limited to a partial opening. The experience matured in such open markets indicates improvements of the quality and the availability of the services, a satisfaction of the passengers in increase from year to year and an increase of the number of transported passengers that, in some cases, it has exceeded 50% over 10 years. In other liberalized markets the award of contracts of public service by means of contest has allowed savings in the order of the 20-30% for a determined level of services, that they can be plowed back in the improvement of the same ones".

The third within is that of railway infrastructures. "In order to guarantee an access to the fair and opened railroad to all - it has explained the Commission - it is necessary that the nets are managed by independent managers of the infrastructure in efficient and not discriminatory way and that they are coordinated to level EU in order to favor the development of a genuinely European net. In order to do so as that the net is developed in the interest of all the interested subjects and in order to maximize the operating efficiency, the Commission proposes to strengthen the role of the managers of the infrastructure so that they have the control of all the central functions of the railway net, comprised the planning of the investments in the infrastructure, the daily management and the maintenance and the planning of the timetables". The Commission has specified that, also on the escort of the numerous claims introduced from the users, it considers that "the managers of the infrastructure must be operatingly and financially independent of all the operators who assure the circulation of the trains. This - it has explained - is essential in order to eliminate the potential conflicts of interest and to guarantee to all the enterprises a not discriminatory access to the track. Online general, the proposal confirmation that the institutional separation is the way simpler and transparent in order to achieve this objective. Of it l the 2019 railway enterprises independent of the managers of the infrastructure will have immediate at the market internal access of the transport of passengers. The Commission can however accept that necessary independence is guaranteed by a "vertically integrated structure of holding", but only in the presence of invalicabili "Chinese walls" that guarantee the necessary separation on the legal plan, financial and operating". The Europe Commission has specified that, "for protecting such independence and in perspective of the full fleeting opening of the market in 2019, to the inserted railway enterprises in a structure to vertical integration it could be prohibited to operate in other Member States if they will not be able to demonstrate to the Commission that the safeguard clauses are adopted all in order to assure equal conditions in the practical one and that in their domestic market a loyal competition is possible".

The last within is that of the staff of the section, that it altogether employs assigned 800 000. "Vitality of the railway field - it has observed the Commission - depends on the presence of force a competent and motivated job. In next the 10 years the railroads will have to face various challenges arranged in this within: to attract new staff in order to replace a third party of their organic one that will go into retirement, reacting at the same time to a new and more competitive context. The experience of the Member States that has opened the relative markets demonstrates that greater and better places of work are created. The normative picture of the European Union guarantees to the Member States the possibility to protect the workers, imposing to the new enterprise that has adjudicated the contract of public service to absorb the staff of the old enterprise at the moment of the passage of deliveries, going beyond it general obligation on the transfer of sanctioned enterprises from the EU".