The UK Railway Industry Association (RIA) has welcomed the publication of a new report on the competitiveness of the EU rail supply industry.
The report was developed by the EU expert group on the competitiveness of EU rail supply, which RIA Senior Policy Manager Damian Testa is a member of, and covers 10 policy areas, including digitalisation, innovation, skills and training, internal market, standardisation, EU public procurement, EU supporting mechanisms, access to markets and finance for SMEs, access to international procurement market and intellectual property rights.
“As the UK prepares to leave the EU, we hope we can continue to play a role in this work and to transfer the recommendations of this report into our future rail policy, whatever the outcome of the Brexit negotiations.”
Background to the report: Following a resolution of the European Parliament in 2016, which called for a strong and competitive EU rail supply industry (2015/2887(RSP)), the expert group bringing together small, medium and big companies, as well as associations representing the whole value chain (including railway operators and infrastructure managers) and EU countries drew up those recommendations. The group is composed of 10 national authorities, 12 trade organisations or national associations representing different value chain manufacturers, 8 system manufacturing corporates (train builders), 2 innovation and technology clusters, and 23 equipment manufacturers (signalling, telecommunications, noise protection, fire protection, electronics, trucks, infrastructure and contractors). 10 out of the 45 members are SMEs. 6 meetings co-chaired by Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs and the Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport took place in 2018 and 2019 (with input from various other Commission’s services).
