Reader Comments:

Views expressed in submitted comments are that of the author, and not necessarily shared by Railnews.

• Gregory Darroch, London

  Found the information I wanted!
  
  It was a presentation entitled The European Commission’s Fourth Railway Package and appears to have been to the Transport Economists’ Group.
  
  This is part of the extract:
  
  Legislation for the 1992 single market …
  1988 Sweden separates infrastructure Banverket and operator SJ
  1991 Directive 91/440:
  ■ Mandates accounting separation from 1993
  ■ Great Britain separates infrastructure (Railtrack), trains (ROSCOs),
  freight, and creates and lets 25 passenger “franchises” … by 1997
  
  As such, I do not think we can lay privatisation wholly at the foot of governement but they do have a lot to answer for.
  
  (Just to amplify my previous answer, as you have rightly said accounting has to be separate. But that is all. There is nothing in the list you quote that requires a particular form of ownership, except the last item. The decision to create Railtrack, franchising, etc., was an entirely British one.--Editor)

• Gregory Darroch, London

  I saw a report not so long ago outlining the developments in Britain's national railways. One very interesting parts of the report was the timeline between the EU establishing anti-monopoly laws for national bodies (such as British Rail) and the establishment of privatisation. Essentially, the privatisation process prempted the EU laws by very little time, which strongly suggested the privatisation was actually becasue of the dreaded EU laws rather than just because of any ulterior motive by governement, though of course their policies benefited!
  
  Perhaps the editor is aware of what document this was...it was an official ORR or governemental one, which I shall try and dig out.
  
  (The railways were privatised because it was government policy to do so, and not because of any EU law. There is a requirement to separate 'track and train' which goes back to EU Directive 91/440. This was issued two years before Parliament passed the Railways Act authorising privatisation in Great Britain (not, repeat not, the entire United Kingdom). The purpose of 91/440 was to allow access to the rail network for operators other than the infrastructure-owning incumbent ('liberalisation'). In practice, the existing railway administrations were only required to reconfigure themselves as separate divisions. The infrastructure division must permit open access, but both divisions can (and in other countries often do) remain state-owned.
  
  NB It is debatable how much of the railway industry in Britain is truly privatised. Network Rail, although legally a limited company, is effectively a hybrid whose debts are guaranteed by the Treasury. Franchise-holders are operators with limited-life contracts which are tightly specified by the state, and have few assets of their own. The only major private sector, capital asset-owning entities in the 'core' railway are the rolling stock leasing companies.--Editor.)

• claydon william, Norwich Norfolk

  The 'Keolis' bis should be rejected before bidding starts on the basis of fairness and hypocrisy by the French.
  
  Here we have a SNCF 'stalking horse' company bidding for UK business, when the French have failed to open up their domestic market to other businesses from other EU countries.
  
  Its the same as Paris based RATP taking over the operation of Manchester Metrolink, when there is zero chance of a UK based transport operators getting involved in the Paris market.
  
  These bids from other EU countries to operate UK transport services shouild be rejected until there is evidence of reciprocal openness by their home EU countries.
  
  

• Greg Tingey, London

  Nationalised railways - just not OUR nationalised railways ... errr, um ...

• david c smith, milton keynes

  Yes, not only are several of our passenger and freight TOC's foreign - owned ; but some( DB Schenker, Arriva, East Anglian, for example ) are majority owned by foreign GOVERNMENTS.,whose remit is to further the interests of their own taxpayers.
  

• MikeB, Liverpool

  It all started with privatisation when our rail network was deliberately fragmented to prevent any one company becoming dominant and, of course, what was left of BR was not allowed to bid for any franchises. I believe that the government of John Major realised that foreign operators would attempt to become involved, through takeovers and by bidding for franchises, but they decided that they were not going to exclude any foreign operator - either private or state-owned - from the business of running our railways. Ever since, successive governments have maintained the "open house to foreigners" policy. If British Rail had been re-constituted along the lines of Deutsche Bahn and allowed to trade in a totally commercial manner, we might now have the most successful rail operator in the world but sadly, this title has gone to the German company, with SNCF coming a close second.

• Melvyn Windebank, Canvey Island, Essex

  If this bid was successful then it surely raises the question as to whether north of London Eurostar services would follow?
  
  The first question is what would Network Rail need to do to link Stratford International to the ECML and whether such a link might be used to overcome the Welwyn bottleneck with a new line to the Eaśt of the present line.
  
  As to north of London Eurostar services surely the first step should be to extend domestic Javelin high speed trains onto ECML to build a market while politicians sort out their "Little England" mentality and answer the question as to why it's ok to fly to Europe from Leeds but not go by train?
  
  (There is no reason to connect the present international Eurostar operation with its possible minority stake in a British domestic franchise, I suggest, which means that NoL Eurostars are just as likely (or unlikely) as they were before this announcement--Ed.)

• Rich, Calais

  Could this finally mean North of London Eurostar services?

• Martin. Kiraly, leicester

  Another country making profits from our economy, D.B.Shenker (German) have most of our freight trains. And now the french want to start bleeding our resources with what I suspect will be HEAVILY subsidised passenger trains, can we not keep our industries BRITISH. We invented railways and now we need to "import" them, little wonder we are in an economic crisis. All our cash is going abroad