4th Railway Package: Liberalisation passenger transport to ensure a more competitive European rail sector.

Brussels, 17 December 2013 -The European’ Parliament’s transport committee has adopted its recommendation on the so-called fourth railway package, a series of six legislative proposals aimed at opening up the national railway markets and achieving technical harmonisation in the European rail sector.

Mathieu Grosch MEP (EPP, BE) is coordinator in the European Parliament's transport committee and responsible for the dossier on the opening up of the domestic market for passenger rail transport. Following the vote, Grosch said: "Our ultimate aim is to create sustainable jobs in the railway sector while improving the service for passengers. Making the railway sector more efficient through greater cross-border competitiveness is key to achieving this double goal. This is why we need to clean up any restrictive national rules that make the rail transport expensive and inefficient.” To this end the transport committee wants to see greater financial transparency between network management and transport operators and it wants to take into account efficiency criteria when awarding public service contracts.

The inclusion of efficiency criteria upon the insistence of Grosch have caused a change of approach from the Commission. In its initial proposal the Commission wanted to submit all public service contracts to public tendering procedures by 2022. Grosch ensured that these tendering procedures are not compulsory, but that, instead, when awarding contracts efficiency criteria are taken into account – as regards number of passengers, punctuality, the quality of the material etc.

In addition Mathieu Grosch said that “to achieve a well-functioning European rail sector Member States must commit to investing in rail infrastructure, in line with the commitments made in the negotiations on the Trans-European Networks.”

The new rules also establish faster EU–wide certification for railway cars and locomotives, saving operators time and money and which should lead to lower ticket prices for passengers.

The fourth railway package should help ensure that a greater number of passengers opt for the railways. Currently, only 6% of passenger traffic is via rail. This while train travel is safer and less polluting than other transport modes.