Today’s vote in the European Parliament will create an unclear relationship between the one-stop shops and the national infrastructure managers leaving open whether cross-border rail freight services on international corridors will be facilitated or will be made more difficult, the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies warns.
Today, the European Parliament voted in second reading on the compromise text agreed by the European Commission and the Council concerning a European rail network for competitive freight. Although a majority of Members of the European Parliament agreed with the institutional compromise, a number of them were unhappy about the unclear formulation of competences between one-stop shops and infrastructure managers in Article 12 §2a. They had the opportunity to voice their concerns in a special roll call vote on this article. This article continued to be controversial even following the Commissions' explanatory note after the compromise was adopted.
″The results today show that European decision makers wish to make further steps towards a single European railway market″, acknowledges Johannes Ludewig, Executive Director of the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER).
The vote could have unintended consequences for international rail freight. ″The adopted text leaves open questions about the role of one-stop shops. According to the European Commission, one-stop shops will play a coordination role with the possibility of taking decisions. This is contradictory in itself and raises the question of who will take responsibility for the decisions and its financial consequences″ Ludewig commented.
The introduction of one-stop shops in the European rail network will also cause challenges for the industry. “Introducing completely new one-stop shops to handle customer requests for paths on international rail freight corridors adds an additional administration layer potentially conflicting with existing path allocation bodies” underlines Johannes Ludewig. ”In addition, the use of such corridor one-stop shops will be mandatory, limiting even further the freedom of choice of railway undertakings, who could in the past address any infrastructure manager along a corridor to buy international paths. Creating new supranational monopolies is certainly not the intention of European politicians.”
CER welcomes, however, the decision to include an advisory board dedicated to railway undertakings in the governance of international rail freight corridors. At the same time, CER fears that this might be an insufficient solution as representatives of this advisory board will not be included in the management board, nor will the advisory board have any right of recourse to member states in case of disagreement with infrastructure managers’ decisions.
“Being the main users of the corridors, railway undertakings should have an active role to play in the decision-making process on corridor improvements, together with the infrastructure managers,” emphasises Johannes Ludewig.
The European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council agreed that today’s vote will end the legislative procedure. The current version of the text is expected to be adopted by the Transport Council at one of their upcoming meetings.
 European Parliament agrees to unclear compromise on freight corridors | [ ] | 184 Kb |