Brussels, 18/09/2012 (Agence Europe) - Commissioner Kallas is promising a balanced approach when it comes to liberalising domestic passenger rail traffic and announces that calls for tenders must be made for public contracts in that sector. He set out details of his intentions in relation to access to that market, to be proposed in the fourth railway package at the end of the year during the Innotrans trade fair in Berlin on 18 September, the annual event for the rail sector.
Domestic passenger traffic. The transport commissioner's speech mainly focused on the broad lines of the next opening of the domestic passenger rail transport market, which will be one of the three chapters of the upcoming fourth railway package. Currently, international freight and passenger rail transport are already open to competition and a small number of countries have already opened up their domestic passenger service market. In his crusade for a more effective railway, Kallas therefore aims to generalise competition in this sector also.
Balanced opening. “If there is no competition, there is no incentive to improve or change, particularly in the case of a monopoly or dominant operator”, Kallas stressed in Berlin, deploring the fact that the conditions for market access are often biased in favour of incumbent rail operators “particularly where they also control the railway infrastructure”. Nonetheless, he conceded that, since conditions are different across the member states, he felt the “best way forward is a mixture of open access and public service contracts - in other words, competition in and competition for the market. The challenge here will clearly be to strike the right balance between the two”.
Obligation to make calls for tender. Kallas also intends to take a closer look at public service contracts in the fourth railway package, which cover the majority of domestic passenger traffic. Although the contracts involve subsidies, they are not necessarily subject to a tendering procedure. Kallas plans to put an end to this situation, saying he believes “we should introduce mandatory tendering as a way to get more innovation and efficiency into Europe's railways”. His legislative proposals in this respect should also better define the scope and size of contracts since, he says, “national authorities now have a wide margin of discretion in identifying areas where public service obligations are imposed”.
One stop shop. Kallas also spoke more broadly about access to the rail market, which is always faced with different obstacles, including when it comes to the authorisation and certification of rolling stock. The Commissioner bemoaned that “to authorise a new locomotive to operate in a first country, for example, can cost up to €6 million; a national recertification can cost up to €4 million. These procedures can take up to two years”. This means it should be possible to build rolling stock to certain EU standards; and then certify it - just once - to run everywhere in the EU. This is a basic principle of the European single market, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this autumn. In his view, the solution to this is to make the European Railway Agency (ERA) a “one stop shop” which could deliver the European security and authorisation certificates while counting on national authorities to carry out the technical work. One must expect the powers of the ERA to be strengthened with the fourth rail package, and for this to be a second chapter in the expected legislative proposals of the commissioner.
In coming months. The last chapter of the rail package will deal with governance and, more especially, in separation (unbundling) between the infrastructure manager and the service operator. This is a subject that is clearly sensitive, on which the commissioner did not expound during his speech in Berlin. Nonetheless, it is highly likely that he will give announcements on this during the conference organised by the Commission on the future of rail transport in Europe, in Brussels on 24 September. At this stage, the commissioner underlines that his services are still gathering up the different views, before determining what the Commission's view should be in the legislative package. The package will concern the three areas mentioned above (domestic rail transport, the European Rail Agency and governance) and will be composed of six legislative proposals which could nonetheless be presented at different moments, a senior official intimated. (MD/transl.jl)