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The CIV Working Group celebrates its 60th meeting
New proposal of the European Commission on multimodal passenger rights discussed
The focus of the meeting was to discuss the European Commission's new proposal of a regulation on passenger rights in the context of multimodal journeys (MM PRR) from a legal perspective.
This file has been published in the Mobility Package of the European Commission and it aims to extend the various existing EU passenger rights, i.e. rail, air, maritime and bus/ coach rights, to the rights of passengers moving between modes of transport. Companies involved in a multimodal journey should operate under harmonised rules. However, the individual passenger rights of the respective modes of transport remain applicable.
The CIT and the CIV WG members were strongly involved in this process and contributed their expertise to text amendments to the proposed MM PRR as part of a CER position paper. Those text amendments were discussed and presented during the meeting in February.
At the meeting, it became clear how important it is within the MM PRR to better define clearly the terms and therefore responsibilities between the multimodal carriers involved and to differentiate them from those of the ticket vendors/intermediaries.
The challenge here is that all different EU passenger rights (i.e. rail, air, sea, bus/coach) are diverse and encompass different definitions of carrier so that harmonisation within the multimodal context of the proposed regulation is cumbersome and can lead to inconsistency.
Other legislative activities at EU level were also raised during the meeting, such as the Multimodal Travel Information Services (MMTIS), the Package Travel Directive, European Disability Card directive, “Capacity regulation” etc.
Enhancements of the Agreement on Journey Continuation (AJC)
The AJC represents an important sector driven contribution on enhencing a passenger's travel experience. The AJC belongs to the action point 8 of the CER Ticketing Roadmap for a better support of passengers during disruptions and delays.
The CIT committed to improve communication about the AJC in order to increase the transparency of information on this agreement. For this reason, the CIT worked together with the European Passenger Federation (EPF) on an information leaflet on the AJC, which should contain short, clear and customer-friendly information. The Leaflet drafted jointly with EPF is published on CIT-Rail.org.
Important developments in the field of TSI Telematics
In addition, participants of the CIV working group were given an overview of the current status of the TSI revision. The key points of the text proposal before the 101st RISC Committee were presented.
The meeting was concluded by invitation for the next 61st CIV WG meeting which will be held on 15th and 16th May 2024 in Berne and in a remote form.