European ERTMS Governance

The European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) is a key enabler to improve cross-border operations by providing a single European command, control and signalling system, ensuring transport reliability, increasing capacity, and improving safety levels. The concrete benefits are different country by country. ERTMS trackside and onboard deployment is progressing much more slowly than expected. Single national ERTMS implementations are developing at a different pace, undermining the benefits of a systemic Europe-wide ERTMS deployment.

On the occasion of the 73rd General Assembly of the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER), a CER Position Paper on European ERTMS Governance was approved.

The position paper highlights that synchronised and harmonised trackside and onboard ERTMS deployment is vital to achieve the modal shift targets envisaged in the Green Deal, under the precondition of having suitable funding and financing options in place. Today ERTMS governance is spread along several different bodies (EU ERTMS Coordinator, CINEA, EU Agency for Railways, Europe’s Rail JU), each one responsible for a single component of the value-chain. This generates a clear need for an integrated approach, in order to improve consistency between objectives and fundings. CER believes that ERTMS deployment needs to be boosted and to this purpose a future centralised EU-Level ERTMS governance and Program Management could help with regulating funding, coordination of National Implementation Plans (NIP), resourcing, market uptake, migration, and transition.

Read our position paper below.