On Monday 22 March, the Council of the EU gave the green light for the European Commission to sign, on behalf of the EU, the “Declaration of Locarno”, a text affirming the importance of transferring a greater share of transalpine traffic from road to rail.
The Member States also reiterate the need to work further with each other to develop international rail freight and passenger transport solutions.
The text, approved in early March by the Member States’ ambassadors to the EU, had already been supported individually by a dozen Member States in September, as well as by Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
It contains some recommendations, calling, for example, for the modernisation and development of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) rail infrastructure. “In order to intensify investment in rail infrastructure”, it advocates for the mobilisation of financial resources in the framework of post-Covid-19 recovery plans.
The signatories also call for better coordination of the timetables for the implementation of infrastructure construction and maintenance projects. They also call for an improvement in the operational management of rail traffic.
“The end-to-end supervision and management of international rail transport operations should become a standard based on appropriate governance, rules and system”, they argue.
Finally, they insist on the non-binding nature of this declaration and on the fact “that it does not prejudge any future decisions relating to financial measures or Union law”.
However, this statement is not entirely unprecedented and is part of a wider context of renewed interest in rail. It comes just a few months after Ministers backed the ‘Berlin Declaration’ on the future of rail freight in Europe (see EUROPE 12564/18) and as the EU celebrates the European Year of Rail (see EUROPE 12628/13).
See the “Declaration of Locarno” https://bit.ly/3rcYNpH (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)