The European Commission has evaluated performance of the European Union Agency for Railways (ERA). While positive on the whole, the Commission identified some points where ERA has failed to meet expectations. The agency is not entirely to blame.
The European Commission characterised the work of ERA as being “relevant” for the rail sector, helping to bring closer the much-desired Single European Railway Area (SERA) and boosting its safety.
Yet, ERA has not been able to meet expectations set for the agency in 2013. Notably, the Commission says, the agency’s responsibility to issue vehicle authorisations has demanded so much of its capacity that it has fallen short of delivering on other, policy-related tasks. Those include TSI development, the “cleaning up” of redundant national rules and monitoring National Safety Authorities (NSAs) and Notified Bodies (NoBos).
Due to “market trends” and “specific railway sector business decisions”, the workload for authority tasks was unexpectedly high, and so ERA prioritised those. The figure below shows how ERA’s workload for those tasks grew throughout the years, with vehicle authorisations taking up the vast majority of the demand. Despite the growing workload, ERA has managed to meet all agreed upon deadlines, says the European Commission.
As seen in the graphs, which use ERA data, the railway expects further growth in vehicle authorisations in the coming years. That has to do with the foreseen implementation of DAC and ERTMS.
The Commission also expects rapid growth in the issuance of Single Safety Certificates.
A lot of the burden for ERA comes from the freight sector. For example, 31% of all vehicle authorisation requests concern freight wagons. That is not entirely surprising, since most freight rolling stock needs to be suitable for international use. By default, ERA handles those authorisations. 95.8% of all wagon authorisation requests are for multi-country use, for locomotives that share is 48.4%.
Policy falls behind
As said, the prioritisation of authority tasks has had its drawbacks. For example, between 2019 and 2021, ERA restricted the scope of its audits of NSAs to staff competence management and supervision activities, according to the Commission. These were considered essential to get assurance on the safety levels achieved by the Member States. During the same time period, ERA audited just 23% of NoBos under the agency’s mandate.
The main factor that hindered ERA’s capacity to fulfill its tasks concerns resource limitations linked to the contribution of the EU and the establishment plan. “Since the adoption of the 4th Railway Package, ERA has faced the challenge of an establishment plan cap and limits to the capacity for recruiting of additional resources”, the Commission explains.
At the same time, some NSAs showed performance issues and “limitation in their cooperation” with ERA, which negatively impacted the work of the agency.
In spite of the challenges, the EU’s railways remain among the safest in the world, with a declining rate of accidents and fatalities, says the Commission. Rail is also still the safest mode of land transport in the EU.
