Since 1991 the European institutions have adopted a series of texts paving the way for market opening in the rail sector. Directive 91/440 ‘on the development of the Community’s railways’ laid down the foundations for market opening, which started effectively (except in some countries such as the UK, Germany, Sweden where it started approximately 10 years earlier) with the First Railway Package in 2001, followed by two other packages. The entire rail freight market (national and international) is now fully opened to competition, while international passenger traffic, including cabotage, is open to competition since 1 January 2010.
In 2010, the European Commission carried out a study on “Regulatory Options on Further Opening of the Rail Passenger Market” (known as the “EVERIS Study”) aiming at testing and comparing the impact of various models of liberalisation. CER commented on the results of this study in a dedicated position paper which can be downloaded from the CER website. A short reminder of the CER critical opinion of this survey as well as the full recommendations we made for the Commission’s intended follow-up impact assessment are recalled in annex to this paper.
In its 2011 White Paper (“Roadmap to a Single European Transport Area – Towards a competitive and resource efficient transport system”), the European Commission proposes to “open the domestic rail passengers market to competition (including mandatory award of public service contracts under competitive tendering)” as the first initiative to be taken among a list of 130 measures.
CER supports market liberalisation measures as a principle. CER believes that introducing competition and market mechanisms generally contributes to increasing quality and productivity. In this context, non-discriminatory and transparent access to the European railway network has to be guaranteed. At the same time, CER wishes to stress that the opening of domestic passenger transport to competition must be adopted in a consistent manner in
order to promote the integration of railway markets as well as fair competition between railway undertakings. In this context, experience has shown that liberalisation has contributed to a positive development of railway services in a number of countries, mainly in Western Europe. At the same time the development in other EU member states, mainly in Central and Eastern Europe, has shown that market opening alone is not sufficient and can, in some
extreme cases, lead to serious problems. It is important to recall that the White Paper of 2001 rightly listed a number of accompanying conditions (infrastructure financing; establishing a level-playing field between modes; cancellation of the historic debt; proper compensation for public service obligations) for a sound rail development. These requirements of the White Paper have only partly been followed by sufficiently binding legislation and in many cases there has been a lack of appropriate political action and financing over the last 10 years.
It is against this background that CER believes that domestic passenger traffic liberalisation has to be implemented in a context where infrastructure and public service contracts are adequately financed while respecting the economic equilibrium of such contracts in accordance with existing EU legal requirements and without preventing the development of competition on the market.
 CER Position Paper on Market Opening of Domestic Passenger Traffic | [ ] | 347 Kb |