SPAIN: The European Commission has decided to refer Spain to the Court of Justice of the European Union, saying it has failed to correctly transpose and apply Directive 2012/34/EU establishing a Single European Railway Area.
The Commission explained on October 18 that it believed the Spanish approach was still ‘incomplete’ in several aspects.
While infrastructure manager ADIF has an ‘appropriate’ level of independence in setting up a charging regime, Spanish law does not require implementation within a set deadline. As such the Commission believes that there is a risk that the old system incompatible with EU rules will continue to apply until 2024-25, with operators unable to challenge track access charges in the Spanish courts.
The Commission said the independence of the infrastructure manager and incumbent operator RENFE were not clearly ensured, as the state was currently able to exercise ‘decisive influence’ on decisions including ticket prices.
The Commission believed that ‘key elements’ were missing from the contractual agreement between the government and infrastructure manager, including key performance indicators related to efficiency and a decrease in access costs.
