Railway organisational models: Criteria for a national choice

摘要

Many of the eastern European countries joining the European Community in May 2004 and other eastern European countries waiting for future membership are re-organising their national railways in order to comply with European Union regulations and specifically EU Directives 2001/12, 2001/13 and 2001/14 which replaced respectively Directive 91/240 and its "daughter" Directives 95/18 and 95/19. Although it is a legal requirement to adopt EU directives for membership, there is no denying that these pieces of legislation deeply clarify railway management by identifying two different areas within the traditional railway sector: the management of infrastructure and the management of commercial and operational activities. This split imposed by the first EU Directive 91/440 is already a step forward since on top of the conventional division of accounts, it also urged European railways to introduce new management rules and principles, obliging them to create specific business units with their own sphere of responsibilities, their own assets and liabilities, their own accounts and therefore their own results. This clarification process of what has been called the "railway question", which in the seventies and eighties was considered all over Europe as a basic national issue, is now under way and it is certain that the EU directives have played an effective role in this field.