Increased competition should enhance the attractiveness of rail and make the sector more responsive to customers’ needs, allowing rail operators to compete with other modes. Passenger high speed services will make rail more competitive with regard to air and rail freight increasing market share and contributing to achieving climate change targets.
Although in some member states, national railway authorities are generally operating efficiently, in other countries they don’t have enough staff or the procedures they manage are long and expensive. At the same time, interoperability and safety requirements which should have been aligned to the common EU norms are still very different at national level, blocking the market access especially for the new entrants. This problem affects rail freight transport mostly, as the markets have been opened to competition for several years. The new entrants, who often have limited human and financial resources, are relatively more vulnerable to the complexity of procedures and to the delays they cause. The current long and expensive procedures, especially those necessary for getting the authorisations for rolling stock and safety certificates for transport operators, are important factors which prevent the development and the operation of the EU railway market. Besides being complicated and slow, these procedures do not guarantee sufficient level of mutual recognition of certificates and authorisations. This negatively affects particularly new companies wishing to enter into the market, thus contributing to a low level of competition and lasting market distortions.
Many times, stakeholders also complained that national railway authorities may use technical arguments and a legacy of diverging and not always transparent national rules as access barriers for new entrants. According to the results of the targeted consultation, new entrants may inter alia face discrimination from National Safety Authorities (NSAs) when applying for safety certificate or during vehicle authorisation processes. Stakeholders reported more specifically that the processes leading to the delivery of safety certificate and vehicle authorisation are not sufficiently harmonised and transparent to prevent arbitrary and discriminative decisions by NSAs.
Notwithstanding its important role in creation of the European railway interoperability and safety legislation, it is evident that currently ERA does not have major control and oversight powers with regard to national railway authorities, infrastructure managers or market players. Its monitoring responsibilities are practically limited to monitoring of safety performance and of interoperability. Moreover, the Fourth Railway Package (for which a final vote is expected in July) proposes the enhancement of ERA’s role in improving the cross-acceptance of rolling stock in the Trans-European transport network.
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