What is the impact of European rail policy on the rail system - how effective is it?

The European railways have undergone profound changes during the last decade. In order to increase the intermodal competitiveness of both passenger and freight traffic, the European Commission has introduced legislation via the three Railway Packages. Under this legislation the member states have among others separated operations and infrastructure, completely opened the market for rail freight to competition and – as from January 2010 – will open access to the operation of international passenger services. However, there have been doubts about the effectiveness of these reforms.

Partly these rest on a failure of the member states to fully implement them. The Commission is currently taking action to enforce the directives, as well as preparing a recast of them. But it is also argued that some of the necessary prerequisites for the reforms to be successful are not in place, in particular adequate funding of rail infrastructure in all member states, and charging for external costs on other modes. 

Over the past few years, the Institute for Transport Studies at the University of Leeds (UK) has undertaken a number of research projects to contribute to the identification of best practices in the implementation of EU rail policy and to consider how effective the policy has been. The results from this and other research, as well as the plans of the Commission and the views of the industry stakeholders on where we should be heading will be discussed during the conference Effectiveness of EU Rail Policy.

For more information about the themes of Effectiveness of EU Rail Policy, please have a look at the outline of the conference programme.