Regulation (EC) No 881/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council (3) of 29 April 2004 established a European Railway Agency, hereinafter referred to as ‘the Agency’, to make a technical contribution to creating a European railway area without frontiers. Following developments in Community legislation on rail interoperability and safety and market developments and on the basis of the experience gained in operating the Agency and the relationship between the Agency and the Commission, certain amendments need to be made to that Regulation, and in particular certain tasks need to be added.
(2)
National rules are to be notified to the Commission both in accordance with Directive 2008/57/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 June 2008 on the interoperability of the rail system within the Community (recast) (4), (hereinafter referred to as the ‘Railway Interoperability Directive’), and Directive 2004/49/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 29 April 2004 on safety on the Community's railways (Railway Safety Directive) (5). The two sets of rules should therefore be examined in order to assess, in particular, if they are compatible with the common safety methods and the technical specifications for interoperability (TSIs) in force, as well as if they enable the common safety targets in force to be achieved.
(3)
In order to facilitate the procedure for authorising the placing in service of vehicles which do not conform to the relevant TSIs, all the technical and safety rules in force in each Member State should be classified into three groups and the results of this classification should be presented in a reference document. The Agency is therefore required to draw up a draft for creating and updating this document by cross-referencing the national rules for each of the relevant technical parameters and by providing ad hoc technical opinions on specific aspects of cross-accepting projects. After reviewing the list of the parameters, the Agency may recommend that it be modified.
(4)
Due to its legal competence and its high level of technical expertise, the Agency is the entity which should provide clarification on complex matters emerging from the activity in the sector. Therefore, in the context of the procedures authorising the placing in service of vehicles, it should be possible to request the Agency to issue technical opinions in the case of a negative decision by a national safety authority or on the equivalence of national rules for the technical parameters established in the Railway Interoperability Directive.
(5)
It should be possible to request the opinion of the Agency on urgent modifications to TSIs.
(6)
Under Article 13 of Regulation (EC) No 881/2004, the Agency may monitor the quality of the work of the bodies notified by the Member States. A study conducted by the Commission has shown that there is much scope for interpretation of the criteria to be applied for notifying these bodies. Without prejudice to the Member States' responsibility with regard to the bodies that they choose to notify and the checks that they make to ensure that these criteria have been met, it is important to assess the impact of such differences in interpretation and to check that they do not cause difficulties with regard to the mutual recognition of conformity certificates and the EC declaration of verification. Therefore, at the request of the Commission, the Agency should be able to monitor the activity of the notified bodies and, if justified, perform checks with a view to ensuring that the criteria referred to in the Railway Interoperability Directive are met by the relevant notified body.
(7)
Article 15 of Regulation (EC) No 881/2004 authorises the Agency to assess, at the request of the Commission and from the point of view of interoperability, applications for Community funding for railway infrastructure projects. The definition of these projects should be extended so that the coherence of the system can also be assessed, as in the case of projects implementing the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS), for example.
(8)
Following developments of an international dimension, and in particular the entry into force of the 1999 Convention concerning International Carriage by Rail (COTIF), the Agency should be asked to assess the relationship between railway undertakings and keepers, particularly with regard to maintenance, as an extension of its work in the area of maintenance workshop certification. In this context, it should be possible for the Agency to address recommendations regarding the implementation of the system of certification of maintenance in accordance with Article 14a of the Railway Safety Directive.
(9)
When developing the certification schemes of entities in charge of maintenance and maintenance workshops, the Agency should make sure that these schemes are consistent with the responsibilities already allocated to railway undertakings and the future role of entities in charge of maintenance. These schemes should facilitate the safety certification procedure of railway undertakings and avoid undue administrative burden and duplication of controls, inspections and/or audits.
(10)
Following adoption of the third railway package, reference should be made to Directive 2007/59/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2007 on the certification of train drivers operating locomotives and trains on the railway system in the Community (6) (hereinafter referred to as the ‘Train Drivers Directive’), which lays down various tasks to be performed by the Agency and gives it the possibility to address recommendations as well.
(11)
As far as railway staff are concerned, the Agency should also identify possible options for the certification of other crew members performing safety-critical tasks and assess the impact of these different options. It is intended that, besides train drivers and other crew members performing safety-critical tasks, the Agency reflects on specifying criteria for defining vocational competences of other staff involved in the operation and maintenance of the rail system.
(12)
The Railway Interoperability Directive and the Railway Safety Directive provide for various types of documents, namely, EC declarations of verification, licences and safety certificates and national rules notified to the Commission. Therefore, it should be the Agency's task to ensure public access to those documents as well as to the national registers on vehicles and infrastructure and to the registers kept by the Agency.
(13)
The Agency should examine the appropriate revenues for the tasks related to the accessibility of documents and registers in accordance with Article 38(2) of Regulation (EC) No 881/2004.
(14)
Since the adoption of the second railway package, several initiatives relating to the development and implementation of the ERTMS have been taken. These include the signing of a cooperation agreement between the Commission and the various stakeholders in the sector, the setting up of a steering committee for implementing this cooperation agreement, the adoption by the Commission of a Communication to the European Parliament and the Council on the deployment of the European rail signalling system ERTMS/ETCS, the appointment, by the Commission, of a European coordinator for the ERTMS project as a priority project of Community interest, the definition of the Agency's role as system authority in the context of the various annual work programmes, and the adoption of the ‘control-command and signalling’ TSI for conventional rail (7). Given the growing importance of the Agency's input in this area, its tasks should be specified.
(15)
The Agency plays a leading role in the future deployment of the ERTMS in the whole rail system. To that end, coherence of timing between national migration plans should be ensured.
(16)
The version of ERTMS adopted by the Commission on 23 April 2008 should enable railway undertakings which have invested in interoperable rolling stock to secure an adequate return on their investment. This version should be completed with harmonised test specifications. Any additional specification requested by a national safety authority should not unduly prevent the movement of rolling stock fitted with future ERTMS versions or the version adopted by the Commission on 23 April 2008 on lines which are already equipped in accordance with the latter version.
(17)
In order to promote interoperability, the Agency should assess the impact of the adaptation of any version of ERTMS installed prior to the version adopted by the Commission on 23 April 2008 towards this version.
(18)
The Agency now has a large number of experts specialising in the interoperability and safety of the European rail system. It should be authorised to carry out ad hoc tasks at the Commission's request, subject to the compatibility of those tasks with the Agency's mission and compliance with the Agency's other priorities. In that light, the Agency's Executive Director should evaluate the admissibility of this assistance and report at least once a year on its provision to the Administrative Board. The Board may assess this report in accordance with the powers attributed to it by Regulation (EC) No 881/2004.
(19)
The recruitment of project officers with a contract of a maximum of five years was intensive during the first year the Agency was established, which means that many of the technical staff have to leave the Agency within a short time span. In order to ensure an adequate quantity and quality of expertise and to anticipate possible difficulties in the recruitment procedures, the Agency should be allowed to extend the working contracts of specially qualified staff for another three years.
(20)
The date by which the Agency's annual work programme is to be adopted should be amended to allow for better synchronisation with the budgetary decision-making process.
(21)
The Agency's work programme should identify the objective of each activity and to whom it is to be addressed. The Commission should also be informed of the technical results of each activity, as this information goes well beyond the scope of the general report, which is addressed to all the institutions.
(22)
Since the objective of this Regulation, namely the extension of the Agency's mission to include its participation in the simplification of the Community procedure for the certification of railway vehicles, cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States and can therefore, by reason of the scale of the action, be better achieved at Community level, the Community may adopt measures, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity set out in Article 5 of the Treaty. In accordance with the principle of proportionality, as set out in that Article, this Regulation does not go beyond what is necessary in order to achieve that objective.
(23)
Regulation (EC) No 881/2004 should therefore be amended accordingly,
