Prague, 16 January 2024
- The independent passenger rail operator RegioJet recently ranked 2nd Best in Europe in the “ Ranking of Rail Operators ” by the non-profit Transport & Environment (T&E).
- However, this does not mean that it has not faced severe attempts to restrict competition in the passenger rail market.
- On the contrary: straight after the EU Commission identified one attempt to impede its growth , RegioJet has identified yet another: it says that there has been illegal State Aid to benefit its competitor, Czech Railways.
Recently, RegioJet published a detailed report on how it believes that the state-owned incumbent passenger rail operator Czech Railways (ČD) has been the beneficiary of illegal State Aid.
It says that this is due to the intentional wrongful allocation of real estate during the unbundling of the state operator ČD and the state infrastructure manager SŽ back in 2003 (even though this problem was already identified then, but ignored).
RegioJet gives detailed evidence on how ČD then sold some of these real estate assets to the infrastructure manager SŽ several years ago, at a vastly inflated price, well above the value that would have been established by a Private Investors’ Test.
It claims that this ‘windfall’ unfairly benefited ČD in the passenger rail market, where it competes against a number of independent passenger rail operators.
- Furthermore, Regiojet warns that another such ‘windfall’ for ČD will probably be attempted again soon, further distorting the market.
ALLRAIL Secretary General Nick Brooks says: “all arbitrarily allocated non-core assets should be removed from the state operator without compensation via a reduction in equity. Otherwise we will have reached a situation where, in the Czech Republic, the single EU rail market exists in name only”.