The Honorary Chairman of the UIC, Adam Wieladek: The Technical Regulator of the European railway market has been launched
In his interview Mr Wielą
dek analyses the documents, adopted by the European Parliament and the European Council, which constitute the so-called Second Railway Package. In his opinion these are legal papers of ultimate importance and they should be considered as such by the railway enterprises and the infrastructure managers in their current activities.Bearing in mind the fact that the establishment of a uniform system of European railway transport is of the common interest of all member countries and requires significant funding, the relevant European institutions have concluded that problems should be solved by means of joint efforts. To this end and on the basis of Regulation No 881 came the establishment of the European Railway Agency, which is a legally independent EU body.
The process for the launching of the Agency started with the selection of its headquarters. The head office of ERA will be based in two French cities at a distance of 20 km from each other – namely, Lille and Valenciennes. The second step was the nomination of the Administrative Council in June. In accordance with Art. 26 of the above Regulation, the Agency comprises 25 representatives of EU member-countries, four representatives of the European Commission and six more people (without voting rights), who represent the railway carriers, infrastructure managers, railway industry, customers of passenger services, customers of freight services and trade unions.
The Administrative Council adopted the Work Programme of ERA for 2005, which covers five major tasks in the sphere of railway safety and other eight tasks concerning interoperability.
The first group of tasks includes: elaboration of common safety methods and common safety targets; development of a format for safety certificates; implementation of monitoring of safety performance; provision of technical expertise, development of a public database on safety documents.
In the field of interoperability, the Work Programme of ERA envisages the following tasks: revision of the Technical Specifications for Interoperability (TSIs) for conventional railways; development of a database on interoperability; supervision of the performance of relevant institutions; implementation of interoperability monitoring; monitoring of the interoperability of infrastructure projects; elaboration of certification system for maintenance workshops and registration of rolling stock; elaboration of ERTMS specifications.
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