Brussels, 28/04/2014 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has done an about-turn in the infringement procedure against France and the United Kingdom over the rules relating to the Channel Tunnel, which is managed by the Eurotunnel company (reasoned opinion sent in June 2013).
On Monday 28 April, European Commissioner for Transport Siim Kallas said that he welcomed the decision by the company to cut prices by half for railway freight operators' rail access from this June. Kallas is hoping that these freight price reductions will lead to greater Channel Tunnel use at lower prices. He said that “this will help to unblock the main bottlenecks in the European transport network”. He also welcomed this “good news… for European companies, which need efficient transport services at competitive prices, as well as for consumers, who ultimately benefit from their services”.
The Commission comments, however, surprised the Eurotunnel company, which had begun a strategy to gradually cut prices from May of last year. This optimisation also promises to cut off-peak prices by 25%, as well as reduce the hours of maintenance costs by 33.3%, which will also be reduced to two nights per week instead of three, from next June.
One source close to the dossier welcomed the decision by Eurotunnel and said that the Commission was attempting to wriggle out of an infringement procedure that it was no longer able to bring to a definitive end. A letter from the European commissioner to French transport and environment ministers had already promised that no other action would be undertaken in the ongoing infringement procedure by the time these new measures are adopted. It says, too, that complaints about access fees to the network and capacity allocation have been suspended. A spokesperson for the Commissioner, Helen Kearns, however, stated that the Commission still had to assess implementation of the new Eurotunnel measures before it could proceed to a reduction in the scope of the infringement procedure. This involves cost transparency, price-fixing, the independence of the regulatory body (inter-governmental committee) and distribution of tunnel capacity.
Eurotunnel is also criticised more generally over a variety of administrative and technical barriers that remain and prevent optimum use of the Channel Tunnel. (MD)