EUROPE: The European Rail Freight Association has issued a 2024-29 manifesto setting three out three broad policy objectives and four issues it believes must be addressed by during the current five-year EU legislative cycle.
Its objectives are fixing infrastructure, achieving the Single European Railway Area and improving rail freight’s competitiveness.
ERFA says that to achieve these goals:
- infrastructure has to be renovated and the Trans-European Transport Network completed, while ensuring that temporary capacity restrictions take into account the effects on rail freight and operators are financially compensated. ERFA says Switzerland currently follows this path and can be a benchmark.
- Track access charging regimes have to be reassessed and developed into a strategic framework to support shift to rail. EFRA calls for a stable multiannual framework and non-discriminatory support measures to support rail freight instead of subsidising specific market segments or specific companies.
- The implementation of ERTMS has to be prioritised, but co-ordinated with the availability of onboard units and specification changes have to be minimised. Onboard units have to be fully financed, as there is no direct added value to operators from installing them. ERFA says there should be no new funding for other technologies until ERTMS is fully implemented.
- A Single European Railway Area has to be completed with reduction of bureaucracy, simplified language requirements and simplified certification processes.
‘The manifesto comes at an important moment ahead of the appointment of a new European Commissioner for Transport’, said ERFA Secretary General Conor Feighan. ‘It will be important the incoming Commissioner can ensure that current initiatives can be concluded in a satisfactory manner, such as the Railway Capacity Regulation, whilst also developing an ambitious strategy for rail freight.’
