2023-09-26 21:33:57
Suddenly everything is happening very quickly: For years there has been discussion about breaking up Deutsche Bahn AG and about separating rail and operations, and now the DB supervisory board will deal with it on Wednesday. According to information from the FAZ, the control committee’s agenda includes the merger of the two DB subsidiaries DB Netz and Station & Service to form a public-interest infrastructure company, or DB Infra Go for short. The industry service “Tagesspiegel Background” first reported on the details of the planned rail reform. The Federal Ministry of Transport did not want to explain the plans before the upcoming supervisory board meeting.
The new stock corporation is scheduled to begin operations in January – under the umbrella of the DB Group, but with clear influence from both the Federal Ministry of Transport and the Supervisory Board. However, the influence of competitors – and fellow users of the rail network – is limited. This is already causing strong opposition in the industry.
Most fundamental system change since 1994
A central component of the railway reform is the change of direction: In the future, the railway infrastructure in Germany should no longer be operated purely economically, but rather oriented towards the common good. For the first time, criteria such as climate protection, customer friendliness and punctuality will be given weight in future decisions about the rail network. At the same time, the new design is intended to ensure that the federal government controls the railway’s fortunes much more than before. An infrastructure plan is to be drawn up every year, which the railway industry and thus also the railway’s competitors can influence via an advisory board.
Conversely, the control and profit transfer agreements between the group umbrella and the infrastructure company remain in place, and the DB board should continue to be able to give instructions. However, the Group’s influence is limited by the fact that these instructions will in future be subject to the approval of the Supervisory Board. It is still unclear who will lead the new company. According to the information, Berthold Huber remains the responsible board member for infrastructure in the DB Group.
“Obviously failed model”
It is already clear that the new company will have significantly more financial resources than before. In view of a large-scale general renovation, the traffic light government has decided to make a further 40 billion euros available to the railways over the next four years. This means it can invest a total of more than 80 billion euros in the long-neglected rail network. For years, the necessary repairs were only carried out half-heartedly and in several stages, which is why there is now a major renovation backlog that will be completed from July over the next seven years. The federal government also wants to secure a say in the financing: possible profits from Infra Go should first flow to the federal government and then flow back to the new infrastructure company with clear announcements about their use.
With the plans for what is probably the most fundamental system change since the railway reform in 1994, Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) is implementing a promise that the traffic light government agreed to in the coalition agreement. Both the competitors as well as the Greens and the FDP would have liked a clear separation of operations and rail. The Monopolies Commission and the Federal Audit Office have also been warning about this for a long time. But above all, the powerful railway workers’ union EVG – and in its wake also the SPD – have been insisting for years that the “integrated group” remains in existence, i.e. that rail and rail operations remain in one group.
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The union, which recently demonstrated its negotiating power in months of collective bargaining, fears massive job cuts if the company is split up. According to information from the FAZ, it has now been agreed between the DB board and the responsible works councils that there should be neither a reduction in personnel nor a worsening of working conditions for the employees in the new company. However, the union has so far refrained from celebrating the plans. EVG boss Martin Burkert describes the Infra-Go plans as a “compromise” to prevent the breakup of Deutsche Bahn: “It is crucial for us that the interests of employees are protected and that the guaranteed financing for the general renovation also comes.”
The leading railway associations, however, sharply criticized the plans. They find it completely unclear what the solution found is intended to be for the common good: Neither the future goals nor the management, financing, control or even the transparency of the data is more oriented towards the common good than “the obviously failed model with the two well-known DB stock corporations,” it was said it in a joint press release from the Federal Association of Local Rail Transport, the freight railways and Mofair, an association of competitive railways in passenger rail transport.
They criticize the fact that the DB Group should continue to have the authority to give instructions to Infra Go. It also doesn’t help that the supervisory board could, if necessary, override DB AG’s vote. “This will once again create completely inefficient structures that hinder a rapid and independent focus on the common good.” For the associations, it would be the “worst case” if an internal DB reorganization were to begin after the decision planned for Thursday, and all really important open questions were postponed In the end, they might even be made part of the election campaign mass – or ultimately not addressed at all.
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