Luxembourg, 11/06/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 11 June, Transport Ministers left the Council meeting without having made any distinct progress on the 4th railway package.
The Commissioner for Transport, Violeta Bulc said: “It is regrettable that it was not possible to find consensus on the adoption of a general approach today. It is difficult to find a balance between establishing the rules that take into account a large number of different structures”.
The main disagreement focused on the “market” pillar which, according to the Commission draft, calls for the opening up of the national passenger transport markets to competition by 2019, a deadline that member states would like to put back until 2022. This liberalisation process seeks to make it compulsory for public service contracts in the EU to be open to competition and focuses on the direct allocation of contracts to operators for conventional railway lines. This blockage has been particularly acute among small member states, whose internal market accounts for less than 1% of the total volume of travellers in Europe. These states are effectively calling for an exemption to the liberalisation process, given that the incumbent operators would not be able to effectively deal with foreign competition. This is rejected by certain member states, as well as the Commission, which considers these criteria too arbitrary.
The solution could possibly come from the Dutch delegation, which is not proposing any terms of criteria for market share but rather, terms of performance based on a raft of statistical data. This proposal, however, does not look like it is going to get consensus either, particularly at the French delegation, which believes that this kind of criteria would lead to a market that has to deal with a whole range of separate issues and would subsequently lead to fragmentation on the European railway market.
The Slovenian Commissioner stated: “The Luxembourg presidency will attempt to obtain a general approach in October… But the Commission will not be making any concessions on the key principles that it included in the compromise”.
The technical pillar, on the other hand, seems to be on the right track and could obtain an agreement during the trialogue meeting next week. (Pascal Hansens)