Assessing the railways subsidy in selected European countries: insights from the Italian case

Ugo Arrigo and Giacomo Di Foggia

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper is aimed at analysing state aid to the railway sector in the Western countries of the European Union. Although this is a preliminary exercise, literature lacks of specificity. From the analysis, a highly differentiated situation in Europe emerges: a group of countries with permanently lower subsidies (the Iberians, the Scandinavians and Austria); a group of countries with a medium level of subsidies (all of the major countries: Germany, France and the UK) and a group of countries with permanently high subsidies (Italy, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands). This paper demonstrates that railways have so far benefited from weakened forms state aid control. This can be motivated (i) by the need for modal rebalance recognised by national transport policies, (ii) by the natural monopolistic character of the network whose duplication is not economically feasible and (iii) by the non-competitive traditional structure, from a legal point of view, of even the transport service. This situation, however, is set to change drastically with the opening up of services to competition, which has already been done in the European Union for the freight sector and in some countries, although only on a voluntary basis, even for the passenger sector. By focusing on Italy, this study finds that the elevated state aid to the rail sector consequently results in both a major public finance problem and a potential factor of competition distortion.

Keywords: Railways; State aid; Public finance; Subsidies; Europe; Competition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H81 L43 L81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in European Journal of Business and Economics 8.4(2013): pp. 1-9

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