The Sustainable "Withdrawal" of the Railways from the European Political Front

It is the title of an article published in the magazine Rail International, by Jacques Rogissard, doctor in political sciences and graduate of the Superior School of Transports from Paris. The article through which the author tries to make a critical analysis, based on sociological explanations, of the transformations experienced, during this century, by the railway sector. In the following lines we will relate the entire article, especially that quite a lot of our readers were willing to read something like that.

"I have experienced those days, already distant, when the Railway Group of the European Community, as it was called back then, was an interlocutor respected by them, and the brochures, the studies and position taking was well known by everyone, even by its adversaries, as being intellectual works wearing the cachet of its excellency and which, moreover, were reflecting a general interest concern differentiating then from the corporations. This foremost epoch of the railway influence does no longer exist. It has started to degrade since half '80s, and in the next decade this deterioration has become quite fast. Presently, as well as in the past, no other mode of transport was and is rich in economists, engineer and jurists of a great professionalism. What happened then? I am satisfied to advance a few sociological explications based on the scouting of some of the most obvious deeds.
The '80s and '90s decades have been some exultant neo-liberal ones, that we have showed it is quite underlying differing from the classic liberalism. The dominating ideas promoted by it have been reduced, for a while, the tone of the criticisms (which was sometimes accused that is in connivance with the communism that was about to collapse) and it has underlying influenced the Occidental government - even if they were know as belonging to the left. The railway technical-structure did not remain opaque to this influence. There were several links between its leaders and the political frameworks, so this could happen. In fact, why? First of all, because there is installed a practice that gains more and more weight, to assign certain high positions, at the management level of the railway companies, to certain personalities came from outside, who through the circumstances were not ingrained with the railway environment culture. And then, maybe more likely for a long series of commercial deception provoked by a structural modification of the traffic, as well as a competition deviation (let's not forget about this fact) were weakening, to a certain extend the psychical resistance of the railway men. How could you stay insensitive to the passengers' complaints, who are more demanding in point of comfort and speed than their forerunners, or the ones of our clients for freight traffic, that is permanently looking for new types of rolling stock more and more diverse, meeting the imperatives of the continuous traffic flux? The new world wanted more and more individualism, a greater extension of the markets and a reduction of the constantly increased bureaucracy. The logic of the transport flux will replace the one of the territories. Let's deny then with indignation the old strategies of the mass and peak transports, the public status (the first railway privatization after the year 1914 dates since this epoch) and let's take into consideration the national public interest! So let's completely forget the financial arguments, which were issuing from the relationships between the railway networks and the State, as well as the ones pleading for a more equitable policy in point of competition! There is useless to allege once again to what extend this revision, not even painful, was unfair, taking into account several commercial and technical fights won by the railways, in an institutional context where this was fully injured. I only make the remark that there has been strongly manifested the temptation of repudiating everything was performed, not always successfully and with a lot of tomtom, in order to totally submerge in a modernity that was not considering at all the Disraeli affirmation: "the fashion means everything that is old-fashioned". Numerous persons with high positions have been caught in this netting, fact that has brought about an entire cortege of non-conditional and docile followers. The result of this adhering to a wrong policy is meant to aggrieve and, if the reason claims bit by bit its rights, the field that remains to be gain, wow, quite large. The internal restructuring that the new state of spirit generated, have quite seldom gave encouraged the good rules of the administrative sociology, as well as to the one of organizational order. Privately, these restructuring have dislocated numerous study ways, which specialists, left aside or promoted, have disappeared from the reflection circles before sharing their know-how to a very desperate structure that took over the relay race. On the other hand, under the budgetary pressure, we assist to a reduction of the training programs and to a shortening of the probation periods. Starting with that and up to betaking more and more the consultancy offices that have substituted the expertise performed at internal level - expertise which was still a quality at least equivalent to the one of the works elaborated outside and in any case that was less expensive, being articulated on a first class documentation - was not too far to happen. Yet the respective offices, at least the ones that are quite often approached, are the spokesmen of a neo-liberal ideology, without being freely alleged. The studies performed by these offices do not grant any importance to the public service: they insinuate without difficulty in the logic of functional disintegration (unbundling) of the old structure or the entrance in the stage of the "newcomers" from the railway network. By all means, it is not impossible to demand these counseling offices otherwise, yet such a desire should be designed in the orders that have been placed. A strong attraction to the models, or, more likely, to the schematic presentations made by the European Commission is manifested quite often.
The assembly of the European railway system has lost its doctrinaire cohesion. It is more likely as an army, which instead of being compact let its troops to separately fight with a superior enemy force to each of it. It was quite simple once: all railway networks - even NS (Netherlandese Spoorwegen - Netherlands Railways), which apparently appeared to strive to the private economy - had a public status, had less or more the same type of relationships with the state, were strongly integrated and, united through the similitude of problems that they were dealing with, were making a coalition in order to demand the harmonization of the intermodal competition, on their behalf, as well as on behalf of the collectivity. Presently, the financial difficulties, the striking need of investments and the inequities on the market remain the same, still the homogeneity of the railway world is different. In the majority of the member states, the infrastructure administrators have been separated from the transporter, the famous "status' of the railway men is crumbling or disappears, and all the factors that interfere on the railway network are submitted, to a variable extend, through the agency of the European regulations to certain competition conditions that are tougher and tougher than in the past. The temptation of the concept "everyone minds his own business" tends to prevail on the former solidarity (which was excluding certain tough commercial rivalries, we have to inform all the zealous followers of any type of competition). This temptation is, of course, contradicted by the big international railway organizations, yet they are affected by the fragmentation: (European Railway Community- Communaute Europeenne du Rail - CER) has become independent towards the International Railway Union (UIC), then lost from its composition the infrastructure administrators, grouped in the Association of the European Infrastructure Managers -EIM); practically the Safety platform is no longer part of UIC and, more recently, the last one should fight in order to maintain under his wing the competent services in point of interoperability, which headquarters has been moved from Paris to Brussels.
This new climate, of internal competition, as fatal as it is for the railway cause, has stimulated the individual ambitions, not always complying with the general interest, as well as certain autonomy impulses from certain work groups, which were striving to satisfy their own small interests without caring too much about the coherence of their point of view with the general strategy. On the other hand, the loss of several guarantees of the "state" and, even more, the abolition of this status have created railway men with a less solid attachment towards their work instrument than their predecessors and whom do not hesitate to asses their professional advancement chances either outside the railway sector. This state of spirit leads especially to the increase of mobility of the personnel. They also stimulate the inclination of the personnel to practice in their work the short term reason, which represents the sample of tactical and operational fragmentation, instead of taking into account the convergence necessary on long term.
In the majority of cases, the absence when numbering the management personnel of a railway past does not solve anything. The asperity of the national context need a priority attention from them, even if they can not avoid becoming aware of the impact of the international policy factors on the managers. In this last field, they are more downward to trust their own flair and to listen to the ones assigned in identical position as they are, than to take into account the opinions (when they demand them!) of their specialized collaborators. How could we wonder about the superficiality of the messages sent outside? This superficiality comes from the divergence of point of view, from the haste that advances a thinking, which is no longer supported by resuming the connection with other prolific works from the past, and neither on the sufficient experimenting, in the new given situations, by more and more often omitting the general interest in their dissertations, out of the disparate feature of the offices that have something to say in the filed, as well as from the disputes between certain institutions, which the disintegration process has set out against others. Still, treasures of instructions lay unused at the level of documentation services and in the libraries (we would like, on this occasion, to wish that, in the intensive IT epoch that we are transiting, the responsible of this to perform a periodical inventory of these treasures that they own, for the use of the work groups, instead of passively waiting to be placed order). Yet, the personnel do not lack good experts and either creating teams, of small dimensions. The policies of the human resources have developed, fact that is quite good, yet the problem is quite often situated at the charts level, and the obligation to solve it is assigned to the highest level personnel.
No matter which is the pounding of the above-mentioned factors (and this pounding is quite large), the compliance of the railways towards the European Commission is the most direct cause of their disappointments. By all means, this compliance is manifested since the beginnings of the Community. The usual treaties with the state administrations, the managing personnel from the railway system have trusted for a long time the among the community interlocutors they have found persons from the same sociological environment with the national clerks. And, because the government gave plenty of rope to the Commission, the respective personnel were willing to act with a certain docility towards it. But they loudly protested for more than 30 years, against the injuries caused to their own interests, and the technical know-how of the railway men, which cannot be avoided, was representing a solid protection wall against the improvisations of doctrinaire order. Things changed lately.
Starting with the end of year 1990, the optical error regarding the real targets aimed at by the community administration, which serves an ideology (because, under the cover of an European pseudonym, it is exclusively dealing with that) which "consecrates" the structure of the railways without solving its real problems, has more disastrous results. It is possible that certain politicians on managing positions, released from the obligations to agree with the others and satisfied to enter on their own in D.G. - TREN ( General Direction of Transports and Energy) to agree with the hasty adhering to the common policy orientations of transports. If they have not been disappointed yet, they will be in a short while. Not only they are treated as having an auxiliary status (better said, as certain subordinates), but they are also dispossessed, little by little, based on a regulation which set up was agreed by them, of their strategic competencies and the latitude to choose. It is true, some of them have gained some advantages out of this game for their carriers; for all others, who were innocently convinced that they aim at a noble objective in their profession, the frustration will occur sooner or later.
Until then, the Commission exploits the divisions of the railway world, which is the result of its patient "unbundling" activity. It imposes its own agenda and its own deadlines - generally, quite short - for the response at its urgent questions, "assimilating" the information (quite often, through the agency of certain interposed consultants) in order to adapt as soon as possible its ideas than at the efficiency of a sustainable development, extends its de facto powers through a "soft law" (permissive law), which modifies on the sly the positive legislation etc. The Railways, which guiding marks get confuse, they are in the position to hurry up in front of the excessive haste and of a blind acceptance attitude, instead of letting the community bureaucracy to vaunt the weaknesses, even incoherent, of the policy they are promoting, through documents full of errors - which they do not really care about, in fact, obsessed by the competition made as purpose. Unfortunately, the General Division of CER has been part of all these mistakes. One of its leaders has acted, as a matter of fact, a few years ago, as an influence agent of a commissar on transport issues. In the case of this structure, as well as in the case of other railway instances, avid of autonomy, the following thing happens: it is not quite framed by general directors and does not get precise orders from them. Yet, in this case, we reach once again to the causes of the doctrinal and structural dispersion. We have to foster the hope that through the nomination in its management a former president of Dutsche Bahn AG (German Railways - DB) will confer a resistant spirit and …of offensive, because, from the technical and sometimes juridical point of view, the Commission is more vulnerable that it believes, much too often, in point of railway sector.

Regaining initiative

The task of redressing is far from being outrun. First of all, the neo-liberal mirage is vanishing and consequently, the community management becomes less convincing. Then the finding of the damages is propagated by all attending factors from the railway system, fact generating the inclination to a solidary reaction.
This solidary reaction needs a smoothing of the ideas, in order to rebuild a common and consistent doctrinal body. This fact is perfectly possible, including between the transporters and infrastructure managers, on the condition to be consulted without being pressed by false emergency - the laws of the railway production, the result of a systematic examination of the European texts (where you can get a lot of dead ends and idea displacement), as well as the basic studies elaborated in the past or the current one regarding the transports economy. Let's not forget, what is of a primal importance, the convergence of interests with regard to the continental extension of the market and the competition exerted by the other modes of transport.
Within each company should be set up a permanent pluri- disciplinary concentration between the usual specialists to work together, even if they are not part of the same department, in order to set up solid files to be presented to the general director. This seems to be a big banality and I will be informed that this has been already achieved. Still, what I aim here is very different of the automatic consultancy of the agencies involved in the process, consultancy that, I hope, is everywhere. It is not only about punctually answering the questions that are asked. These questions should be outmatched, and the answers should also be "infused' after the model of the company strategy. It is necessary to have available sufficient time for the elaboration of the proposals and to find out the right solutions, meaning to endlessly look for them, and to firmly refuse to let us clinched by very short deadline established from the outside or by the international professional organization. And, we should not fear to dedicate to the analysis of other problems than the ones chosen by the Commission, so this confrontation takes place on the field chosen by the railways.
Not less indispensable is the formation of some specialists called to take over the relay race. Their strategies should be sufficiently extended, so that they have available a general knowledge of the work instrument, have a good initiation in the transport economy and in the communitarian law, even if they are not specially called to perform as technicians, economists or contentious administrators. The possession of a culture as vast as possible in the field of which the action is the best guarantee of the creativity, insensitiveness at the adverse propaganda and, finally of the effectiveness.
With a clear perception on the objectives with the appropriate decisions way and with the performers with a right vision on the in situ situation, the Railways would regain the credit to the extend of the knowledge, undeniable from now on, of the major utility of the railway transportation mode, in order to satisfy the necessity of our lives in the society.

Article translated by
International Affairs Department of CFR SA