2/24
CIM Session – 06 June 2024 afternoon

The CIM session was chaired by Gilles Mugnier (CIT) and started with a presentation of the possible aspects to be covered by a revision of the CIM Uniform Rules in the medium term. Gerald Wieser (Rail Cargo Group) took up the important points requiring adaptation to meet the current challenges of the rail sector. Erik Evtimov (CIT Deputy Secretary-General) then detailed the five proposals drawn up by CIT and presented to OTIF.

Nicolas Czernecki (FRET SNCF) gave an interesting overview of the General Contract of Use for wagons around 20 years after its entry into force. The GCU is an original form of self-governance and self-regulation of wagon law and the freight market through a multilateral contract. Among the GCU’s strengths are the notion of legal custody of the wagon and the efficient management of damage. However, its weaknesses in terms of governance, the complexity of validating amendments, and the non-coercive nature of the GCU can delay the evolution of wagon law in the current market. It is thus a multilateral contract in need of modernisation.

Erik Evtimov then provided some insight into the work done to digitalise CIT documentation in the light of the eFTI Regulation, the TAF TSI (including TAF operations functions, planning functions and RU-RU functions), and the TSI Telematics Package.

The increase in waste shipments carried by rail appears a positive trend in rail freight transport. Tobias Grabner (DB Cargo) and Guillaume Murawa (CIT) jointly presented this emerging topic.  The new EU regulation on waste shipments can form part of the remedy to current problems, notably by creating a centralised platform for data exchange.

Finally, the EU Commission’s capacity management regulation and its impact on the freight market was detailed by Juan Jose Montero Pascual (Florence School of Regulation), who presented an explanatory diagram of all EU stakeholders, and showed how this structure was to be redesigned as part of the governance and control of the new infrastructure capacity management cycle.

Maria Sack (DB, CIT Executive Committee Chair) concluded the session by pointing out that freight traffic was undergoing a revitalization on several fronts, both in multimodal traffic and in regulatory aspects (COTIF Convention, European law, specific regulations on waste/dangerous goods).