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Acquis and Legislation
Multi-annual contracts for rail infrastructure qualityThe European Community's transport policy is concerned with developing and optimising transport infrastructure and ensuring its sound management in terms of quality, reliability, flexibility and customer orientation. However, there is still concern about the sustainable financing of existing rail infrastructure, the quality of infrastructure service and how to get infrastructure managers to perform better. The Communication to the European Parliament and the Council on "Multi-annual contracts for rail infrastructure quality" COM(2008)54 adopted on 6 February 2008 recommends measures to Member States and infrastructure managers to combine financial equilibrium with an appropriate level of rail infrastructure services. The Communication comes with annexes and an impact assessment.
Consultation on multi-annual contracts for rail infrastructure quality
DG TREN organised a stakeholders' consultation which closed on 12 September 2007
and led to the following conclusions:
Stakeholder Workshop of 31 May 2006
DG TREN E2 organised a workshop on multi-annual contracts (MAC) between states and their railway infrastructure managers in Brussels on 31 May 2006. Some 60 experts from Member States, infrastructure managers (IM), railway undertakings and sector representatives took part. The present note is to give an outline of the main points discussed in the second half of the meeting, which Mr E. Grillo Pasquarelli, director for land transport at DG TREN, chaired. Details on the national case studies and the presentations can be obtained directly from the slides.
The purpose of MACs is predictability, continuity, increased efficiency of infrastructure provision including performance of the infrastructure manager and a better demand orientation of maintenance. MACs are a relatively new arrangement governing the relationship between the state and the railway infrastructure manager, designed to replace the ‘traditional’ system of loss compensation of the state to the infrastructure manager, decided on an annual basis in conjunction with the adoption of the state budget. They may take different legal forms depending on national legislation and political and administrative choices, and their description as “contracts” is used here to cover synthetically a variety of legal arrangements all covering a similar substance – an obligation by the infrastructure manager to perform in exchange of funding from the state.
MAC are not required under the EU rail directives, but the directives set out obligations which may be seen as a framework conducive to using such a mechanism. In the first place, there is a requirement for management independence of the infrastructure manager; secondly, there is the obligation for Member States to ensure the long term balance of expenditures and revenues of the IM; thirdly, there has to be separation of accounts and cost accounting, as well as the prohibition to transfer public funds between a railway undertaking and the IM. Finally, the state aids rules in the Treaty should be mentioned.
The state of play regarding MACs varies considerably between Member States. Some do not use them, some do not contribute to maintenance and renewal of their rail infrastructure in the first place, some are in the process of negotiating MAC and some are in the process of extending them. At the same time, there is an increasing number of Member States that plan to introduce them having put in place the requirements under the first railway package.
The duration of MACs as practised at present is generally between four and six years, with exceptions on both ends. Preparing and negotiating them takes often more than two years, even when only a contract extension is at stake.
The regulatory body may be used to monitor an existing MAC and facilitate the contract settlement, provided the regulatory body has the required staff and expertise for such type of assessment and is strong and independent.
An asset register recording the assets and their condition is a prerequisite for MACs.
MACs can be a win-win situation for the IM as well as for the state. They lead the actors to make trade-offs between tax-payers and users’ interests, between maintenance and quality of the network and, thirdly, between short-term maintenance and renewal.
MACs allow shifting from input specifications, i.e. to compensate the IM for a particular expenditure to output-specifications, i.e. performance related payments. Many stakeholders are in search of good output specifications or performance indicators, but they are difficult to identify.
MACs that only include renewal costs, but not maintenance, can create the risk of suboptimal life cycle costs. They can lead the infrastructure manager to maintain too little, knowing that renewal costs can be recovered from the state at a later stage. Such deferred maintenance can lead to a lower infrastructure quality.
MACs should place incentives on the infrastructure manager to increase his efficiency over the years.
The Commission should monitor compliance of Member States with their obligations under directive 2001/14 art 6, ie. the long term financial viability of IMs.
Sanctions can consist in penalties (fines), reduced output levels corresponding to reduced financial input, a replacement of managers or a reallocation of rail infrastructure to a different infrastructure manager. Examples where this has happened exist for all of these four cases.
Before sanctions are imposed, the two parties (and the regulatory body) should endeavour to reach a friendly settlement.
When sanctions are levied, the revenues should stay within the sector.
Presentations
The content of these presentations and the views expressed remain the responsibility of its authors, see also the link to the disclaimer on top of this page.
Presentation BAV - Switzerland [1] See also section on conclusions in the Communication of the EU Commission to the European Parliament and the Council of 3 May 2006 (COM(2006)189 final).
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Communication on "Multi-annual contracts for rail
infrastructure quality" COM(2008)54 of 6 February 2008 
