EU ‘plans to prioritise international trains’, warns Swiss railway chief
The director of Swiss federal railways, Vincent Ducrot, fears that international rail will take precedence over Swiss rail at the end of negotiations with the European Union.
The EU is considering giving international routes priority over domestic travel, he said.
The negotiating mandate between Switzerland and the EU provides for the opening of international rail lines to competition. The problem is that all the train paths are occupied, indicates Ducrot on Wednesday in Le Temps.
On the Geneva-Paris route for example, for which several European companies would like to offer bids, Switzerland would have to remove one train if another is added, he explains.
Currently, priority is given to scheduled national traffic and international traffic comes last in terms of priority, he added.
But negotiations between Bern and Brussels provide for the automatic resumption of European law. The EU is considering standardising the system by giving priority internationally.
“The second huge concern we have is that the level of punctuality of the international system is totally different from ours,” adds Ducrot. Delays therefore risk being imported into Switzerland.
Today, if a German train arrives late in Basel, “to take a common example, we stop it and send a domestic reserve train. If tomorrow we can no longer do it, that means that the train in question is accumulating delays, but above all that it is putting the national system behind schedule.”
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Translated from German by DeepL/mga
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