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MEPs back new legislation to boost rail travel

Xinhua, December 15, 2016 Adjust font size:

Gathered in Strasbourg for its plenary session, the European Parliament approved, Wednesday afternoon, a new railway legislation package aimed at promoting investment in the ailing sector and boosting services.

As part of the larger set of proposals known as the fourth railway package, the new rules seek to pump up the 71-billion-euro(75.65 billion U.S. dollars) sector via increased interoperability and safety standards between national networks, market liberalization, and social impact balancing.

The three proposals adopted on Wednesday will allow rail companies to offer their services in European Union (EU) domestic passenger rail markets. In cases where national authorities award contracts for public services for the provision of rail services, bidding for the public service contracts should be made open to all EU rail operators. Such contracts account for about two thirds of passenger railway services in the EU, and the bidding process should encourage lower prices for customers and tax payers alike.

Direct awarding of public service railway contracts will still be possible, without bidding, but must offer improvements for passengers or cost efficiency gains.

"This wasn't an easy package to deal with," admitted Wim van de Camp, rapporteur for one of the proposals, during a Monday evening debate that preceded the vote. "We're talking about further market opening on rail in Europe."

The difficulty of the process was reiterated by fellow rapporteur David-Maria Sassoli, who stressed the lengthy process, saying "We've now been working for three years and two months and finally we've reached a conclusion on these negotiations."

Proposed harmonization between several member states and national railway systems, however, have created concerns about social impact and consequences, even if the fourth railway package is expected to improve service quality and lower fares for passengers following increased investment.

Rapporteur van de Camp, hoped the negotiators had "managed to strike a balance between the dynamics of opening the market and the protection of workers," following the lengthy discussions between his party dominating the European right and their socialist and leftist counterparts.

The new rules will enter into force allowing rail companies to offer new commercial services on domestic lines from Dec. 14, 2020, with competitive tendering to become the general rule for new public service contracts from December 2023.

The railway sector in Europe makes up close to 5 percent of the EU gross domestic product, according to the European Commission, and accounts 215,000 kilometers of track length in the EU, which is almost enough to circumvent the planet five times. Railway transport share has decreased since 1970, however, despite average fare increases of 42.6 percent between 2005 and 2015.

Members of European Parliament (MEPs) also hope that increasing the use of trains, an environmentally friendly means of transport, would help decrease emissions across Europe, an important objective in light of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change which entered into force on Nov. 4, 2016 and sets ambitious targets for reducing emissions worldwide. Enditem.