Today, the European Commission decided to refer Hungary to the Court of Justice of the European Union for failing to comply with the Single European railway area Directive ( Directive 2012/34/EU ) related to the status of the national regulatory body responsible for the Hungarian railway market. According to the Directive, Member States must establish a rail regulatory body to ensure the correct application of EU rules on rail market access. To guarantee its impartiality and ensure the good functioning of the railway market, this regulatory body must meet several independence requirements. In particular, it must be a stand-alone authority, fully separate from any regulated entity and must be organisationally and functionally legally distinct and independent from any other public or private entity. As Hungary has not taken the necessary measures to ensure the compliance with EU law, the Commission has decided to refer it to the Court of Justice of the European Union.
Background
The Single European railway area Directive (Directive 2012/34/EU) sets out the rules that apply to the EU rail sector, including the conditions for access to railway infrastructure and services, the tasks and responsibilities of infrastructure managers and regulators, and the charging for the use of railway infrastructure. These rules are important to guarantee that railway undertakings enjoy fair and non-discriminatory access to the railway network. To this aim, the Directive includes provisions on the system's governance to avoid situations of conflict of interest between infrastructure managers that give access to the network, railway undertakings that offer transport services, national authorities that own and finance the rail network and award public services contracts, and regulatory bodies that monitor and enforce at national level compliance with the Directive.
Under Hungarian railway law, the rail regulatory body is established as an organisational unit of the Ministry of Construction and Transport, which is responsible for transport matters.
The Commission considers that this violates the independence requirements laid down in the Single European railway area Directive (Directive 2012/34/EU) and poses a risk of conflict of interests.
