INDIA: Following the recent general election, Mamata Banerjee took over as Minister of Railways on May 26. She succeeds Lalu Prasad.
Re-elected to the Lok Sabha from the Kolkata south constituency in West Bengal, Banerjee is President of the All India Trinamool Congress, which she founded in 1997. She has held several government posts since being elected to the Lok Saha in 1984, including Chairman of the Railways Committee in 1998 and Minister of Railways from October 1999 to March 2001.
UK: The rail sector has welcomed the outline plans for local politicians to have greater control of passenger rail services which are set out in the government’s white paper on devolution in England, but questions remain about the future scope and structure.
While the EU’s third and fourth railway packages sought to liberalise the passenger rail sector within the bloc and influence it beyond, the establishment of a competitive dynamic within the European market seems less assured than it has for some time, argues Executive Editor Nick Kingsley.
GERMANY: The European Commission has concluded that Germany’s provision of €1·9bn to support the national railway’s freight business DB Cargo is in line with EU state aid rules. Following a complaint from a competitor, the Commission opened an in-depth investigation in January 2022 looking at four ...
