Rail monopoly news – Dawn Raid by the Commission – first of many?
The annual Rail Freight Conference organised by the European Commission in Vienna on 4th December provided an interesting backdrop to the dawn raids by the European Commission as part their investigations into possible violations of ‘EU anti-trust rules that prohibit cartels and restrictive business practices and/or abuse of dominant position in the sector of rail passenger traffic.’
So it is safe to assume that this involved the only major operator based in Vienna, incumbent OBB, which was subject to a dawn raid of over 60 inspectors who no doubt took away a mass of documents, electronic equipment and mobile phones, not only belonging to the company but also private ones as well.
So it was also no surprise that the new Director of DG MOVE, Henrik Hololei, in his introduction to the conference, spoke about the need to complete the Fourth Railway Package in full by next year and that the Commission would be turning its attention to compliance with both existing and new legislation. Maybe this dawn raid was the first example of this new policy priority.
The raid must have been doubly embarrassing for the Chief Executive of OBB, Christian Kern, who is also President of the Community of European Railways and Infrastructure Managers (CER) who have campaigned very strongly, supported by the Austrian, German and French Governments, to weaken the rules on transparency of financial flows between infrastructure managers and train operators, and to weaken the independence of the infrastructure managers. CER has also done its best since 2013 to split the 4th RP so that technical issues are tackled but not market or governance issues which would bring in more competition.
At the conference CER again pleaded for more public money for its members, but this is unlikely to happen whilst markets are closed to competition. Interestingly, a recent Berger report1 shows a clear correlation between the deregulation of rail markets and private finance. The more markets are opened up, the greater role private capital plays in financing new railway equipment. No sane private investor will put any penny into such a a non transparent and monopolised market
Thus, these competition issues could lay incumbents open to the challenges from DG COMP unless they behave themselves. Maybe they are even now worrying about who will be next in line for a dawn raid! In any case, they face following OBB down the reputational slippery slope, whatever the outcome of the present investigations.
More importantly, this dawn raid will encourage passenger and freight operators across Europe to watch very carefully for signs of anti-competitive practices in the market and, no doubt, draw this to the attention of the European Commission..
If the incumbents and their member state owners don’t mend their ways, then a 5th Railway Package may be needed!
Tony Berkeley is a Board Member of the European Rail Freight Association and Chairman of the UK Rail Freight Group. The opinions expressed here are his own.
Tony Berkeley 00447710431542, berkeleyafg@parliament.uk
Reference 1: http://railworkinggroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Private-financing-of-rolling-stock.pdf.
European Commission press release:
Antitrust: Commission confirms unannounced inspections in rail passenger transport sector
Brussels, 2 December 2015
The European Commission can confirm that on 24 November 2015 its officials carried out unannounced inspections in the sector of rail passenger transport and related services in Austria.
The Commission has concerns that the companies concerned may have violated EU antitrust rules that prohibit cartels and restrictive business practices and/or abuse of a dominant market position (Articles 101 and 102 respectively of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union). The Commission’s investigation relates to alleged anti-competitive practices aimed at excluding competing rail passenger transport operators from the market.
The Commission officials were accompanied by their counterparts from the Austrian competition authority.
Unannounced inspections are a preliminary step into suspected anti-competitive practices. The fact that the Commission carries out such inspections does not mean that the companies are guilty of anti-competitive behaviour nor does it prejudge the outcome of the investigation itself. The Commission respects the rights of defence, in particular the right of parties to be heard in antitrust proceedings.
There is no legal deadline to inquiries into anticompetitive conduct. Their duration depends on a number of factors, including the complexity of each case, the extent to which the companies concerned co-operate and the exercise of the rights of defence.
Ends
Noting that ‘businesses’ should be confined to the Workplace, and so then should their un-countably numerous and cowardly secretive cartels;
our democratic interest is primarily in and for our Lifeplace; and it is here that we need you to be weeding-out the lifeplace “cartels” that parasiticly-operate outside of the Workplace,
as well as those being deeper constitionally-protected within the Business Workplaces that are supposed to be supporting our Lifeplaces.
Perhaps a give-way is needed here,
because this is a greater overshadowingly hidden Topic, but strictly not the centrally-focal one here ;
but just before I do, a tangible sort of instance might help us to to be aware also of the integration-task much more strategicly-vitally facing us
Take “Roads” as a similar Transport issue.
Roads have become broken-surfaced, jammed, and life-blocking-up,
literally by insidiously–invasive “extensions of Factory and Business Production-lines” by “Delivery and Service” lifesupports-destructive vehicles /…/
and shouldn’t governments thereto also be considering that,
despite the parallel-dominant invasiveness of all the various “private cars”
on highways and byways
and parkingly=clogging-up “private-streets”,
literally as de facto “covert-business” car-fleets
serving majorly, many even exclusively, the Workplace and its Business “interests”,
that it is not only we billions of innocent and defenceless pedestrian Lifeplace “sustainworthies” whose wellbeing, human-efficiency, and right-to-health is being likewise insidiously destroyed,
but Life itself that is being thereby extincted /…
and the Railways are “complicit” in this, as well as in their own so-called “Right”..
[ I give way ]
Whilst giving way, another vital factor perhaps follows from your advice that
” – there is no deadline to enquiriesa into anticompetitive conduct” [*].
We in the Lifeplace, as well as you in the Governance-Workplace, have a deadly-difficult Gordian-knot task,
to unpick the blockaging caused by multi-conflation within non-publicly-evaluated terms, such as “Competition”.
As a ‘foundation-definitive guide[**]
“People-Control” can be classified into five main level, from the “worst” to the “best-and-most-essential;”:
Exploitation
Manipulation
Competition
Nurturance
Integration.
[**] the only published ‘advance’ I know of was Jim Fadiman’s (USA -universities Psychology, and reach-out in person to at least Brisbane Australia – (where I ‘confronted’ him over a similar politico-socio-educational conflation-problem but he had no time to respond to the matter)
—————————-
The problem with “Competition” is that at one end it is “friendly-constructive”
such as in a game of Tiddleywinks (with an infant)
whilst at the other end it is both
“destructive-individual-competition” even “murder” and “serial ‘killing'”;
and slippery-slope irreversibly down into “genocide” –
unto not imminently-impossible “All-Out-WW3-Total-Earthlife-Destruction”.
====== JSDM I think I’m now “done” here =======