Brussels, 11/10/2011 (Agence Europe) - The overhaul of the rail package is beginning to take shape with the adoption on Tuesday 11 October of the report by Debora Serracchiani (S&D, Italy) by the European Parliament (EP) transport committee. Not all the issues have been resolved, however: the ball has been put back in the Commission's court on decoupling.
The report on creating a single European rail area, adopted by the EP transport and tourism committee, responds to a draft directive aiming to make the rail sector more competitive and efficient by providing appropriate funding and correcting competition distortions. The committee would like to see a strong European regulator, well funded and properly staffed, much to the delight of Werner Kuhn (EPP, Germany).
Other points brought in by amendments from MEPs are the simplification and speeding up of procedures, more precise rules on the leasing of installations that are not used, the need to strengthen the consultation process on infrastructure funding and separation of accounts (financial revenue was separated from service provider revenue).
However, decoupling (ensuring that transport operators and infrastructure managers are quite separate bodies), an issue that has long been under discussion in the EP transport committee, remains to be resolved. In adopting the Serracchiani report, the committee, to the chagrin of Roberts Zile (ECR, Latvia), calls on the Commission to bring forward proposals on this subject by 2012.
Johannes Ludewig, Executive Director of the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER) is pleased to see that MEPs acknowledged, in how they voted, the importance of a healthy financial framework. (MD/transl.rt)