The 40th Regional Assembly Europe met in Paris and online on the morning of 1 July, bringing together senior representatives of member companies, partner organisations and colleagues from the UIC HQ team. The meeting was chaired by Andrea Minuto Rizzo on behalf of Stefano Donnarumma, CEO of FS Italiane Group, and warmly welcomed by François Davenne, UIC Director General and Sandra Géhénot, UIC Director Europe.

This 40th RAE was an opportunity to review the work undertaken in the Region in Q1 and Q2 as well as some of the focus topics of the European Work Programme.

Updates were given on the following:

Liaison with members and partners
In addition to the work undertaken alongside the statutory meetings, Sandra Géhénot described the other activities of the Europe region such as the “UIC Days”, a series of UIC management board bilateral exchanges with its members and partners with the aim of aligning on key issues and identifying areas of specific benefit for the member. Exchanges this year included:
– January: Bane Nor, Enthur, AERRL (new member)
– March: DB and DTVG
– April: MAV

Liaison with ERA
The cooperation agreement between UIC and ERA aims to ensure convergence and compliance on a certain number of topics including:

• Telematics (ticketing/OSDM)
• Telecoms (FRMCS)
• Safety and Operations
• HOF
• Combined Transport
• Safety Culture Peer Review
• Work on ontologies to drive synergies of activities to achieve interoperability
• More frequent exchanges on train driver language
• Aligning on document cross-referencing led by the Standardisation group

Liaison with CER-EIM
Three to four liaison meetings take place a year with CER-EIM, two of which have been held this year, in February and June, with particular focus on the topics of Ticketing (OSDM) and FRMCS. These meetings are intended to coordinate efforts, leveraging the expertise and mandates of each association to develop synchronised approaches to specific topics, thereby supporting shared members more effectively.

European Work Programme
The aim of the programme is to monitor a certain number of issues clustered around the strategic objectives. With a new period of governance ahead, the idea is to create a more structured and shared approach.
The workshop in May this year looked at designing a work programme for the region where the Assembly would be a tool for the members on a broader level – not just an additional administrative layer that imposes priorities, but where members feel they can have an insight at a certain moment in time.

UIC Statistics Platform
Alice Favre, UIC Head of Statistics, gave a presentation on the Statistics Platform – a member-driven, practical tool which builds and maintains the largest database on railway transport in the world. The platform is used by 140 participants from 100-member railway companies including academics, consultants, data providers, analysts and strategy teams.

UIC Freight Department
Philip Van den bosch, UIC Deputy Freight Director, gave an insight into the activities of the Freight Department, notably:

• Fit for Freight, a way of disseminating knowledge to the freight community and around the world.
• Harmonisation and technical techniques
• Collaboration and providing value to members
• Corridors, coalitions and strategic influence
• Acquiring new members and increasing over the next three years
• Audit4All: making audit efforts more efficient with a focus on suppliers
• Atlas: location management services for RUs

The next Regional Assembly Europe will take place on 9 December 2025 in Poland.