In a press release on Wednesday 5 July, the Alliance of Rail New Entrants (ALLRAIL) welcomed the decision by the European Court of Justice on 28 June last (C-482/14) in which it ruled against Germany for failing to take all the necessary measures to ensure the transparency of accounts at the Deutsche Bahn railway company, which had been a beneficiary of public aid.
In this decision, the Luxembourg judges pointed out that the same company, Deutsche Bahn AG, in this case, was responsible for infrastructure management and providing transport services at the same time. The Court argued that the company should keep separate accounts for each activity, in an effort to guarantee that the public aid allocated to one or other of the activities is used in a legitimate way and that they are not transferred for other purposes.
The taxes on infrastructure paid by railway operators should effectively be reinvested into the funding of infrastructure and not in transport services subject to competition, which is not verifiable unless the company has a single accounting system. ALLRAIL considers that this kind of practice has a negative impact on competition in the railway services and that it could help reduce prices for the latter. For this reason, it welcomes the ruling by the court in case C-482/14. (Original version in French by Lucas Tripoteau)