Last but not Least? The Europeanisation of the Railway System in EU Member States

The paper deals with the Europeanization process and its effect on the transport policy and transport sector in European countries. More specifically, it focuses on the railways systems and its adaptation to the European pressure. Europeanization by law affects many policy areas and the transportation policy in railway sector is particularly interesting, because it is virtually the last sector which has not been fully liberalized (c.f. air transportation etc.). The liberalization process is the core principle of the European common market. So far, the EU has released just four so-called railway packages, which implements liberalization measures into national legislatures. Most crucial is the principle of decoupling which works as division of railway operator and railway manager. This measure, according to the European Commission, will helps the opening of railway market for other actors as independent or private railway companies and led to better functionality and effectivity of whole sector. Yet the liberalization process is strongly contested by the interest groups such as trade unions, traditional state operators, and most of, by the political actors. This part of liberalization process of transport sector via EU law is most difficult. The research is focused on how the European law in this sector is implemented and how is the liberalisation mirrored in the national legislation. Making use of the theory of Europeanization to clarify the process, the multidirectional perspectives is used. This means both the bottom-up and top-down approach is used concurrently as the member countries affect the whole process of law making in all levels, and conversely, the law adopted on the upper levels of EU affect, then, the member states and its policies. All the EU member states are analyzed in regard to their capability of implementation of the railway EU legislative. A set of modifying factors are identified which can explain the various level of Europeanisation of railway sector across EU member states. The main hypotheses is that the states that generally highly regulate various public and economic sector, they will be less likely to implement the EU liberalisation legislative. Tis is due to the effect of state-led railway sector and union which are very strong. In many cases, the legislation is being circumvented by very creative solutions as holding structure of railway sector where is decoupling only formally implemented. Combining both the quantitative and qualitative approach, the preliminary results shows that for example Germany has rather liberalized railway sector despite the fact that independent variable would predict the opposite. The qualitative approach is then applied to outliers, of which the quantitative phase of a research predicted the opposite or contradictory outcome in regard to Europeanisation of their railway system.