Brussels, 25/02/2016 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission announced on Thursday 25 February that it had referred Poland to the Court of Justice of the EU for failing to comply with the provisions of Directive 2004/49/EC on Community railway safety.
Poland, the Commission says, is failing to guarantee the independence of the accident and incident investigation body and to guarantee that the investigation of serious accidents and incidents is performed by the independent investigating body, in breach of Chapter V of the directive, which is devoted to accidents and incidents (Articles 19-25). The directive sets a series of closely defined independence criteria ensuring that the investigating body has no links to any of the other players in the sector and can make a fully independent decision on whether or not to conduct an investigation, and decide the scale of the investigation and the procedure to be followed.
The directive came into force on 20 April 2004 and had to be incorporated into national law by 30 April 2006. The Commission sent a reasoned opinion to Poland in February 2015 enjoining it to take corrective measures (see EUROPE 11264) but no action has been taken in the intervening period. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)