HARK YE, all ye liberal-minded operators and budding open access companies! Put your plans and aspirations back in your filing cabinets, for ye have lost this year’s battle for market freedom on Europe’s railways.
At a meeting of Europe’s transport ministers in Luxembourg in June, French representative Jean-Claude Gayssot succeeded in fending off attempts to introduce more competition in the rail freight business. The communist minister set out to overturn a German-backed proposition for a directive to ’guarantee competition in the rail sector free from discrimination’. In a debate that lasted 7h, Gayssot dissuaded his counterparts from pushing through a measure that had long been cherished by former Transport Commissioner Neil Kinnock - who had expressed deep concern on numerous occasions about the inability of Europe’s railways to retain their market share of domestic and international freight. Having witnessed in the past senior French railwaymen urging politicians to try and influence their Italian counterparts so that European liberalisation measures do not succeed, we are not surprised at Gayssot’s victory.
It seems that the limited competition that currently exists will survive, and that an organisation will be set up to observe whether co-operation or competition is the more successful. The fact remains that industrial action in recent years by French railwaymen has deterred many potential users from sending freight by rail, and that this has a knock-on effect across Europe because of the large tonnages passing through France. It is all very well to oppose competition, but it is only a means to an end - namely to drive down the costs of rail operations so that they are more competitive against road haulage. We have no doubt that pressure will soon mount again from the free marketeers.
