Opening regional rail to competition: can the member states avoid compulsory rail market opening for regional rail? The French example

Aurore Laget-Annamayer and Patricia Perennes

Chapter 7 in Challenges in Transport Regulation in Europe and Beyond, 2025, pp 119-142 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: With the adoption of the fourth railway package, opening the passenger rail market to competition became mandatory for all EU member states. EU Regulation 2016/2338 indeed set 24 December 2023 as the deadline for ending direct awards for public service obligation (PSO) contracts. However, six exceptions to this rule allow member states some flexibility. Could these exceptions hinder genuine rail liberalization? This chapter explores the issue, focusing on the French example. While French law incorporates all possible exceptions, safeguards have been introduced to prevent misuse of the most ambiguous exceptions – namely ‘exceptional circumstances’, ‘structural and geographical characteristics’, and ‘vertical integration’ – by strengthening the powers of the French Transport Regulatory Authority. Our analysis shows that, outside the Paris Region, applying these exceptions will not be an easy task for the French PTA. In our opinion, France will not be the main ‘provider’ for direct attribution exception in Europe.

Keywords: Rail; Competition; Public service obligation; European law; Direct attribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035369157
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035369164.00011 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:24917_7

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().