The Council of the EU Working Party on Transport - Intermodal Questions and Networks met, on Tuesday 22 October, to discuss the proposed revision of the regulation on multimodal passenger rights (see EUROPE 13501/4). Many Member States continue to call for the deletion of service quality standards.
According to a European source contacted the following day, the Hungarian Presidency has submitted a new compromise text in a further attempt to reconcile Member States’ demands to avoid an excessive administrative burden with the need to ensure a high level of passenger protection and the legal clarity of the text. “Member States generally saw the text as moving in the right direction”, the source said.
They also supported the shift from the multimodal passenger hub managers to the terminal managers, taking up the proposal in the non-paper initiated by five Member States. They suggested building on existing structures and delegating the responsibilities initially assigned to these multimodal passenger hub managers to existing terminal managers.
“Yet many Member States still demanded the deletion of service quality standards, even though the Presidency limited those standards only to those related to people with disabilities and reduced mobility”, reported the source. They continued as well to insist on the deletion of monitoring obligations, formerly the provisions relating to the risk-based approach to monitoring. They also remained sceptical about the liability and compensation provisions in case of failure to provide information.
Delegations were invited to send in their written comments by Friday 25 October. The next meeting of the working party is scheduled for Tuesday 5 November. In the meantime, the Presidency will engage with a number of Member States in bilateral discussions to reach a consensus on the critical provisions of the proposal. Hungary intends to reach a general approach at the EU ‘Transport’ Council of Thursday 5 December. (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)