On December the 2nd, FEPORT attended the 6th edition of the European Intermodal Summit which was organised by UIRR. The event was held online provided a forum for leading voices from the combined and intermodal transport sector from both the business and policy worlds.
UIRR President Mr. Michail Stahlhut opened the conference, by calling attention to the key role intermodal transport plays in addressing several societal challenges while providing connectivity to strategic industries.
Ms. Magda Kopczynska, Director General of DG MOVE followed with a key note speech in which, before providing an overview of the Commission’s efforts related to the Greening Freight package, she congratulated UIRR with its 55th anniversary. She reported that on November 18th, the trilogues on the rail capacity regulation were concluded. The Regulation, once entered into force, aims at making rail freight transport more attractive, for example, by introducing a more flexible planning mechanism which allow for the late allocation of capacity for freight trains while establishing a penalty system which encourages both infrastructure managers and rail freight undertakings to respect their commitments in terms of path allocation and use. Ms. Kopczynska explained that the Commission from the beginning sought to make the CountEmissionsEU text as business friendly as possible and therefore thanked the co-legislators for keeping key provisions from the Commission proposal such as the reference to ISO 14.083. Commenting on the recent Commission to withdraw the Combined Transport Directive proposal, the Director General of DG MOVE explained that this decision had been taken due to a lack of progress on the file as neither the Parliament had established a position while the file was proposed more than two years ago. Yet, the decision is not final yet as Parliament and the Council still have the possibility to express their views.
The first panel focussed on the rail capacity regulation brought together stakeholders from the European Parliament – with assistant to Rapporteur MEP Tilly Metz, Ms. Lena Widefjall, presenting the outcomes of the trilogues – and business, comprising both combined transport operators and industrial actors making use of their services. The discussions allowed attendees to learn about different aspects of the trilogue agreement such as the introduction of socio-economic criteria to inform capacity allocation as well as an enhanced role for ENIM.
In the second and last panel, participants engaged in a lively discussion on safety in intermodal freight, leading to a shared conclusion by industry and policy makers that safety and competitiveness are not competing priorities but actually mutually reinforce each other.
