RÈGIONS de France, an association representing 18 French regions, says its members are ready to work with the national government to set terms and conditions for the competitive tendering of regional passenger services.

THE European Commission (EC) announced on July 11 that it has approved a Danish scheme to help rail freight operators fund the installation of ETCS equipment on their locomotives.

THE European Commission (EC) and the Japanese government agreed on July 6 to remove the Operational Safety Clause (OSC) non-tariff barrier which impacts European rail equipment suppliers within a maximum one year after entry into force of a free-trade agreement between the European Union (EU) and Japan.

SWISS Federal Railways (SBB) has become the 11th member of Europe’s Eulynx Initiative which was formed in 2014 by railways and infrastructure managers to standardise signalling architecture and interfaces.

THE European Rail Industry Association (Unife) together with 22 associations representing other European industries such as automotive, aerospace, steel, machine tools, and food, are calling for an ambitious next European Union (EU) Research and Innovation Framework Programme (FP9).

IRJ at the UIC World Conference on Rail Transport Telecoms, Paris: Key European rail bodies have stressed that the industry will need to make a clear and robust case for its future radio spectrum requirements as it works to develop a successor to GSM-R.

RB Rail, the company set up to oversee the Rail Baltica high-speed rail project to link the three Baltic states to Poland, has appointed its management team and published the results of a cost-benefit analysis.

THE European Commission (EC) announced that rail projects in Greece will receive funding from the European Union (EU) cohesion funds, as part of a €1.3bn investment which will allow major projects that started in the 2007-2013 financial period to be completed in the current 2014-2020 period.

EUROPE’s Shift²Rail Joint Undertaking (JU) has received 60 proposals worth €192.8m under its 2017 call for research projects and a funding request of €136.5m, which is more than twice the available funding of €60.8m.