Editorial

Welcome to the second, spring 2009 edition of UNIFE’s e-newsletter!

It is already three months into the new year and it has been a busy and fruitful period for UNIFE staff and UNIFE members.

One of the many promising developments on the European scene was the European Parliament vote in favour of the Eurovignette Directive, which allows for the internalisation of external costs of heavy goods vehicles. This directive, a crucial breakthrough towards applying the ‘polluter pays’ principle to trucks by allowing for environmental charges to be applied to them, is of great importance to UNIFE and called for joint action with other associations. It is now up to the European Council, i.e. the member states, to make the new Eurovignette a reality. Another bright point was the European Parliament’s vote in favour of proposed legislation aimed at creating a competitive freight network and improving the quality of international rail freight transport in Europe.

UNIFE released a number of position papers and reports vis-à-vis the current economic situation, such as the analysis of European and national recovery plans as far as they concern the rail sector, and most importantly, the Future of Transport position paper which voices UNIFE’s stand on the perspectives of development of European transport until the year 2030. We also actively participated in the EU initiative on bureaucracy reduction by providing input to the European Commission.

Even in this time of crisis, UNIFE believes that Central and Eastern European countries should not be held back in their competitive railway development projects. To this end, we organized a conference in Romania: “Rail Investments in Central and Eastern Europe: Towards a Competitive Railway System” which gathered key decision-makers from the region.

On the other end of Europe was the UIC ERTMS conference held in Malaga, Spain. Besides actively participating in this conference, on this occasion UNIFE released the latest ERTMS statistics which prove how extensively ERTMS is being adopted all over the world.

Creative minds bloom even in the midst of economic woes. The second ever European Railway Award in recognition of outstanding political and technical achievements was presented during the UNIFE and CER Joint Annual reception in January.

The newest addition to our e-newsletter is a “Keep on Track” section, which presents an overview of important dates to keep an eye on during the coming months.

Our Annual Report 2008, now available, sums up our initiatives and events during the previous year. And as always, our website remains the most comprehensive source of information on not only UNIFE events and activities, but also all current developments in the rail industry sector.

Let us hope the spring is as sunny and bright as it has been these last few weeks in Brussels, and that economy recovery initiatives around the world help to bring back some optimism to business actors, thereby turning around the currently difficult economic environment all of us are acting in.

Michael Clausecker
UNIFE Director-General