Fourth railway package proposals

The European Commission announced on 30 January 2013 the fourth comprehensive package of measures to deliver better quality and more choice in railway services in Europe.

1. The Commission wants to cut the administrative costs of rail companies and facilitate the entrance of new operators into the market. Under the new proposals, the European Rail Agency will become a "one stop shop" issuing EU wide vehicle authorisations for placing on the market as well as EU wide safety certificates for operators instead of member state rail safety authorities. 
2. Companies will be able to offer domestic rail passenger services across the EU: either by offering competing commercial services or through bidding for public service rail contracts, which account for a majority (over 90%) of EU rail journeys and will become subject to mandatory tendering.
3. To ensure fair access for all to the railway, independent track ("infrastructure") managers must run networks in an efficient and non-discriminatory manner and coordinate at EU-level to underpin the development of a truly European network.
4. Under the EU regulatory framework, Member States will have the possibility to protect workers by requiring new contractors to take them on when public service contracts are transferred, going beyond the general EU requirements on transfers of undertakings.

Some key figures of the industry.

• The rail industry has a turnover of €73 billion, which corresponds to 65% of that of air (€112 billion), and has 800,000 employees.
• Rail is critical to the effective functioning of the European economy. More than 8 billion passenger journeys are made by rail each year. Rail carries about 10% of all freight traffic across Europe, with estimated revenue of €13 billion.
• The Rotterdam Genoa freight corridor, for example, runs approximately 130,000 trains per year, the equivalent of nearly 4 million trucks per year.

Each year public authorities invest huge sums in the railway sector. In 2009 this amounted to some €46 billion of public subsidies. This kind of public funding is becoming scarcer.