Authorities

The Council of the European Union has six key responsibilities: To pass European laws -in many fields it legislates jointly with the European Parliament-; To co-ordinate the broad economic policies of the member states; To conclude international agreements between the EU and one or more states or international organisations.

The European Investment Bank's mission is to invest in projects that promote the objectives of the European Union. It is non-profit-making and gets no money from savings or current accounts. Nor does it use any funds from the EU budget. Instead, the EIB is financed through borrowing on the financial markets and by
the bank's shareholders - the member states of the European Union. They
subscribe jointly to its capital, each country's contribution reflecting its
economic weight within the Union.

The European Parliament has three main roles: It shares with the Council the power to legislate; It exercises democratic supervision over all EU institutions, and in particular the Commission and; It shares with the Council authority over the EU budget.

The European Railway Agency works with the whole European rail sector and its organisations. For the purpose of preparing its recommendations, the Agency establishes working parties with representatives of the rail sector organisations and the national safety authorities. In certain cases it consults organisations representing labour, freight customers and passengers before finalising its recommendations.

The Commission is the politically independent institution that represents and upholds the interests of the EU as a whole. It is the driving force within the EU?s institutional system: it proposes legislation, policies and programmes of action and it is responsible for implementing the decisions of
Parliament and the Council.

Over the last thirty years, there has been a boom in mobility in Europe.
For millions of citizens travel has become a reality, indeed a right.

Passengers need a common set of principles, so that they can be more easily aware of their rights if something goes wrong with their trip, regardless of the mode of transport they use or whether a journey takes place wholly within a single Member State or goes through an intra-Community or external frontier.

The International Transport Forum (ITF) is a global platform and meeting place at the highest level for transport, logistics and mobility. Key figures from government and politics, business and industry, research and civil society meet in Leipzig each year to debate a transport topic of worldwide strategic importance. The ITF is an inter-governmental organisation within the OECD family. Its founding member countries include all OECD members, as well as many countries in Central and Eastern Europe. In addition, China, India and Brazil are being invited to participate in the Forum. The aim of the Forum is to foster a deeper understanding among policy makers and wider audiences of the role of transport as a key to economic growth and of transport’s impact on the environmental and social dimensions of sustainability.

The Intergovernmental Organisation for International Carriage by Rail principal aim is to establish a uniform system of law applicable to the carriage of passengers, luggage and goods in international through traffic by rail between Member States, and to facilitate the application and development of this system. This legal system may, in addition to rail transport, also be applied to international through traffic in land transport (roads), maritime transport and on inland waterways.