Railways: ambitions v reality
The importance of competition.
In your article “Putting EU competition law on the right track” (9-15 September), you touched briefly upon a key issue for European railways – competition – and the prospect of new legislation.
But that legislative ambition is undermined by more basic questions – whether member states and incumbent operators are playing by existing rules.
The most fundamental question is whether they are respecting overarching market rules, the regulations of the internal market. The reluctance of many member states to separate infrastructure management fully from the activities of incumbent transport operators makes potential new entrants doubtful that they are respecting these rules. Those doubts about market openness are compounded by the control that incumbents usually enjoy over ‘rail-related services’, such as fuelling points, shunting yards, stations, and terminals.
Further amplifying such doubts is the record of member states on complying with existing legislation specific to railways: as you wrote, 13 member states are being brought to court for infringements of the First Railway Package – and that figure could rise, since the European Commission has given some member states a second chance to review their legislation before taking them to court.. Member states are also falling foul of EU rules on state support: state-aid procedures are being launched against member states all over Europe in the areas of passenger and freight transport.
The Commission is now aiming to complete the EU regulatory framework for railways and to end the remaining monopolies in the national rail-passenger markets. That is a laudable ambition. But the doubts about member states’ record expressed by the Commission – and by other service providers – suggests that its ambitions are running far ahead of reality. One thing is assured: lawyers still have much more work to do to enforce compliance with current rules.
Dan Wolff
Railway consultant
Brussels
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