• Objective

The Fourth Railway Package (4th RP) is divided into a Political and a Technical pillar – each consisting of three proposals. The proposals cover rules concerning the opening of domestic passenger transport, common rules for the normalisation of the accounts of Railway Undertakings (RUs), additional rules on safety (Directive 2016/798) and interoperability (Directive 2016/797), as well as the reform of the European Railway Agency (Regulation 2016/796), which changed its name to European Union Agency for Railways (ERA). From June 2019 onwards, ERA acts as a One-Stop-Shop for safety certifications, vehicle authorisations and ERTMS trackside approvals. This means that RUs and manufacturers can reduce costs and efforts by only having to apply to one single authority. This authority will then issue a safety certificate or a vehicle authorisation which is valid across the entire EU. ERA will also issue ERTMS trackside approvals for IMs.

• Involvement of Infrastructure Managers

The 4th RP is of major relevance to Infrastructure Managers (IMs), due to the amount of new legislative acts. It also has a high impact on the wider rail sector, with reforms in financial, operational, legal and procedural areas. These procedures are implemented in 8 EU member states since June 2019 and will be implemented by all by June 2020.

• EIM in action

EIM has produced a guide of the 4th RP for its members;

EIM has consolidated and advised its members on a wide variety of topics related to the 4th RP: the economic equilibrium test, the role of the Platform of Rail Infrastructure Managers (PRIME), the improvement of the process of issuing safety certificates, the vehicle authorisation process, the new route compatibility checks as well as the ERTMS track side approvals and their related fees & charges, etc;

EIM was one of the main authors of the sector guidelines on the technical pillar of the 4th Railway Package;

EIM contributed to all amendments to the TSIs and Application Guides related to the already known open points, error corrections and text adaptations during the revision processes carried out by the European Commission and the EU Agency for Railways;

EIM monitors the work of the European Commission’s Single European Railway Area Committee (SERAC) and the Rail Interoperability and Safety Committee (RISC). EIM is also a recognised stakeholder in the EC Expert Group meetings related to the technical pillar of the 4th RP.

Opportunities

• Enhanced cooperation between IMs through the Platform of Rail Infrastructure Managers in Europe (PRIME);
• Single / harmonised rules, procedures and tasks;ĤRegulatory stability to attract private investment.

Challenges

• Successfully implementing the 4th RP can lead to additional costs for IMs due to new legislation, new processes, new roles and responsibilities;
• Patchy deployment of the 4th RP on national level may lead to different regulatory regimes.