COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT pursuant to the second subparagraph of Article 251 (2) of the EC Treaty concerning the common position of the Council on the adoption of a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Council directive 91/440/EEC on the development of the Community's railways

2002/0025 (COD)

COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT pursuant to the second subparagraph of Article 251 (2) of the EC Treaty concerning the common position of the Council on the adoption of a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Council directive 91/440/EEC on the development of the Community's railways

1. BACKGROUND

Date of transmission of the proposal to Parliament and the Council: (documents COM(2002) 21 final - 2002/0022 (COD) COM(2002) 22 final - 2002/0023 (COD) COM(2002) 23 final - 2002/0024 (COD) COM(2002) 25 final - 2002/0025 (COD)): // 25.1.2002

Date of the opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee: // 19.9.2002

Date of the opinion of the European Parliament on first reading: // 14.1.2003

Date of transmission of the amended proposal: // Not applicable

Date of adoption of the common position: // 25.6.2003

2. SUBJECT OF THE COMMISSION PROPOSAL

There are four related legislative proposals:

- A proposal for the amendment of Directive 91/440 to extend infrastructure access rights to include rail freight services within a Member State and to speed up the opening up of the market.

- A proposal for a Directive on rail safety concerned with definition of the main elements of safety systems for infrastructure managers and railway undertakings. The aim is to develop a common approach to safety and to put in place a common system for the issuing, content and validity of safety certificates. Lastly, the aim is to introduce, as in other sectors, the principle of the independence of technical investigations in the event of accidents.

- A proposal for a Regulation creating a European Rail Agency to provide technical support for interoperability and safety work. Its areas of action would be, firstly, the development of common safety standards and the development and management of a system for monitoring safety performance and, secondly, the long-term management of the system for the establishment, registration and monitoring of technical specifications for interoperability.

- An amendment to the interoperability Directives 96/48/EC and 2001/16/EC. Beyond the adjustments required by the previous proposals for the interoperability directives, the main aim is to ensure coherence of the fields of application between the network in which access will be opened up and the network in which the interoperability rules will have to apply.

3. COMMENTS ON THE COMMON POSITION

3.4 Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Council Directive 96/48/EC and Directive 2001/16/EC on the interoperability of the trans-European rail system

Consideration of Parliament's opinion

The European Parliament has supported the Commission's proposal to extend the scope of the directives to the entire rail network. Without calling this principle into question, the Council wished to have a more gradual approach and has spelt out the various stages of this extension (Article 2), which the Commission has accepted.

With regard to the new elements introduced by Parliament's amendments - as compared with the Commission's initial proposal - on which the Commission expressed a favourable opinion, the Council has not at this stage adopted the definition of the concept of putting into service (amendments 4 and 14), the recording device (amendments 9 and 19), the provision concerning operational communication (amendments 10 and 20) and several less far-reaching improvements to the text.

New provisions introduced by the Council

None

4. CONCLUSIONS

The Commission supports the texts of the common position.

However, as regards the Agency, the Commission would like to draw attention to the forthcoming adoption of the standard provisions for all agencies following the entry into force of the new Financial Regulation.

5. STATEMENTS BY THE COMMISSION

The Commission entered the following statements in the minutes of the Transport Council meeting of 28 March 2003:

- "The Commission intends to present by the end of 2003 to the European Parliament and the Council a proposal relating to the introduction of a European driving licence for train drivers. Besides, the Commission fully supports and encourages the work in progress in the framework of the European Social Dialogue by the social partners, in accordance with Article 139 of the Treaty, concerning the harmonisation of driving times and rest periods for train drivers and staff accompanying trains.

- The Commission declares that the final budgetary needs for the European Railway Agency depend on a clear agreement on the competencies of this Agency between the Council and the European Parliament. These needs, of which a first assessment has been made in the financial statement attached to the legislative proposal, will have to be translated in the annual budgetary requests tabled by the Commission to the Council and the Parliament acting as the budgetary authority. A precise estimate of these needs for 2004-2006 can only be made once the codecision procedure has been completed.

- The arrangements laid down in paragraphs 4 and 5 of Article 8 of the Directive on safety do not constitute a system of prior authorisation."