Brussels, 11/12/2008 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 11 December, the European Commission adopted a regulation on setting up a principally freight European rail network. Thus realising one of the initiatives in the logistics package adopted by the Commission in October 2007 (see EUROPE 9525), the Commission proposes setting up a European Rail network comprising a number of international corridors identified by member states, providing significantly better conditions for freight than is the case currently and promoting passenger traffic. The Commission hopes, thus, to be able to improve rail freight transport reliability and increase the amount of freight transported by rail, the least polluting form of transport.
“Our proposal is intended to make the railway infrastructure a more attractive option for long-distance freight transport across Europe,” said European transport Commissioner Antonio Tajani, adding, “The Commission, member states, infrastructure operators and all other parties in the railway sector must get down to work together to make competitive goods transport happen. The Commission is acting here fully in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity. Member states are - and will remain - free to suggest or sketch out these corridors themselves”.
The corridors, on the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T), will be organised so as to improve rail freight traffic by giving priority to freight trains, through: - better coordination of rail traffic (trains carrying perishable goods could be given priority over passenger traffic; the Commission does not, however, provide criteria for perishable); - better allocation of train paths (each corridor will have a one-stop shop for requests for international train paths and will have rules of priority between the predetermined different types of train); - and easy access to loading and unloading terminals. It will be up to each member state to create and define the number of corridors it wishes. The number of corridors will vary between member states depending on the volume of goods transported on the network: at the latest, one year after the regulation comes into force, each member state which has at least two land borders with other member states will have to propose at least one freight corridor; three years after the regulation comes into force, every member state will have to have at least one freight corridor. This will be increased to two if the volume of goods transported annually on the member state's rail network exceeds 30 billion tonne-kilometres or to three if the volume exceeds 70 billion tonnes. Plans for corridors will be validated at Community level. Every corridor will have its own governance structure. This will bring together the infrastructure managers and terminal managers of the states through which the corridor passes and who, together, will be responsible for drawing up and monitoring measures on the way the corridor operates and the creation of the corridor. Infrastructure managers will retain their responsibility for investment and capacity management in their countries of origin. Transnational corridors, all with similar technical standards and quality and set up according to criteria determined by the Commission, will then be able to be interconnected, thus creating, the Commission hopes, a real trans-European freight network. (A.By./transl.rt)