Directive 2008/110 - Amendment of Directive 2004/49/EC on safety on the EC’s railways (Railway Safety Directive) - Main contents

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

L 345/62

With a view to pursuing the efforts to create a single market in rail transport services, the European Parliament and the Council have adopted Directive 2004/49/EC (3) establishing a common regulatory framework for railway safety.

Originally, authorisation procedures for placing in service railway vehicles were dealt with by Council Directive 96/48/EC of 23 July 1996 on the interoperability of the trans-European high-speed rail system (4) and Directive 2001/16/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 March 2001 on the interoperability of the conventional rail system (5) for new or upgraded parts of the Community rail system, and Directive 2004/49/EC for vehicles already in use. In accordance with better regulation, and with a view to simplifying and modernising Community legislation, all provisions regarding authorisations for placing railway vehicles in service should be incorporated in a single legal text. Therefore, the current Article 14 of Directive 2004/49/EC should be deleted and a new provision regarding authorisation of placing in service vehicles already in use should be included in 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) (6), (hereinafter referred to as the ‘Railway Interoperability Directive’), that has replaced Directives 96/48/EC and 2001/16/EC.

The entry into force of the 1999 Convention concerning International Carriage by Rail (COTIF) on 1 July 2006 brought in new rules governing contracts for the use of vehicles. According to the CUV (Uniform Rules concerning Contracts of Use of Vehicles in International Rail Traffic) appended thereto, wagon keepers are no longer obliged to register their wagons with a railway undertaking. The former ‘Regolamento Internazionale Veicoli’ (RIV) Agreement between railway undertakings has ceased to apply and was partially replaced by a new private and voluntary agreement (General Contract of Use for Wagons, GCU) between railway undertakings and wagon keepers whereby the latter are in charge of the maintenance of their wagons. In order to reflect these changes and to facilitate the implementation of Directive 2004/49/EC as far as safety certification of railway undertakings is concerned, the concept of the ‘keeper’ and the concept of ‘entity in charge of maintenance’ should be defined, as well as the specification of the relationship between these entities and railway undertakings.

The definition of the keeper should be as close as possible to the definition used in the 1999 COTIF Convention. Many entities can be identified as a keeper of a vehicle, for example, the owner, a company making business out of a fleet of wagons, a company leasing vehicles to a railway undertaking, a railway undertaking or an infrastructure manager using vehicles for maintaining its infrastructure. These entities have the control over the vehicle with a view to its use as a means of transport by the railway undertakings and the infrastructure managers. In order to avoid any doubt, the keeper should be clearly identified in...