IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbb/docwpp/201203-221.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Implementation of EU legislation on rail liberalisation in Belgium, France, Germany and The Netherlands

Author

Listed:
  • Xavier Deville

    (National Bank of Belgium, Microeconomic Information Department)

  • Fabienne Verduyn

    (National Bank of Belgium, Microeconomic Information Department)

Abstract

This study provides a detailed and easy-to read overview of the railway liberalisation in Belgium and the three neighbouring countries. The European Union's liberalisation Directives are often complex and are implemented in very specific ways in the different Member States. The analysis goes into some detail about the Commission's underlying motives and economic theories for letting network industries, which had previously been regarded as natural monopolies, convert into competitive enterprises with the separation of infrastructure from operations. The study takes a look at the impact of the European rail liberalisation Directives in Belgium and its neighbouring countries - France, Germany and the Netherlands. There are considerable variations in the way in which the Directives are applied. It is reflected in the way in which the separation of the infrastructure and the transport services within the railway companies was carried out, and in the degree of opening of the market in freight and passenger transport. The analysis shows that the dominance of the former monopolists in the different Member States means that private rail operators face major obstacles. The financial analysis of the railway companies reveals wide variations in economic performance. The combination of better balance sheet figures and a bigger domestic market means that some major players in Europe are financially better off, giving them superiority over the smaller railway companies. This raises the question whether these circumstances will ultimately lead to distortion of competition.

Suggested Citation

  • Xavier Deville & Fabienne Verduyn, 2012. "Implementation of EU legislation on rail liberalisation in Belgium, France, Germany and The Netherlands," Working Paper Document 221, National Bank of Belgium.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbb:docwpp:201203-221
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nbb.be/doc/ts/publications/wp/wp221en.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Schäfer Jan Thomas & Götz Georg, 2017. "Public Budget Contributions to the European Rail Sector," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 16(2), pages 89-123, June.
    2. Pittman Russell, 2015. "Railways Restructuring and Ukrainian Economic Reform," Man and the Economy, De Gruyter, vol. 2(1), pages 87-107, June.
    3. Laroche, Florent & Sys, Christa & Vanelslander, Thierry & Van de Voorde, Eddy, 2017. "Imperfect competition in a network industry: The case of the European rail freight market," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 53-61.
    4. Tomeš, Zdeněk & Kvizda, Martin & Jandová, Monika & Rederer, Václav, 2016. "Open access passenger rail competition in the Czech Republic," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 203-211.
    5. Verhetsel, Ann & Kessels, Roselinde & Goos, Peter & Zijlstra, Toon & Blomme, Nele & Cant, Jeroen, 2015. "Location of logistics companies: a stated preference study to disentangle the impact of accessibility," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 110-121.
    6. Tomeš, Zdeněk, 2017. "Do European reforms increase modal shares of railways?," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 143-151.
    7. Tomeš, Zdeněk & Kvizda, Martin & Nigrin, Tomáš & Seidenglanz, Daniel, 2014. "Competition in the railway passenger market in the Czech Republic," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 270-276.
    8. Pittman, Russell & Choi, Sunghee, 2013. "The Economics of Railways Restructuring in South Korea," MPRA Paper 44992, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Fitzová Hana, 2017. "European railway reforms and efficiency: Review of evidence in the literature," Review of Economic Perspectives, Sciendo, vol. 17(2), pages 103-120, June.
    10. Pittman, Russell, 2016. "Reforming and Restructuring Ukrzaliznytsia: A Crucial Task for Ukrainian Reformers," MPRA Paper 76028, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Cui, Shana & Pittman, Russell & Zhao, Jian, 2018. "Restructuring the Chinese Freight Railway: Two Scenarios," MPRA Paper 88407, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    rail; liberalisation; subsidies; debt;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights
    • D40 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - General
    • H20 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - General
    • L14 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Transactional Relationships; Contracts and Reputation
    • L92 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Railroads and Other Surface Transportation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbb:docwpp:201203-221. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bnbgvbe.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.