One Last Time Before The 4th EU Railway Package: Swedish Incumbent SJ Attempts To Get A New Direct Award Just Before The Deadline

• Sweden is often portrayed as being one of the earliest and best examples of passenger rail market opening in Europe, not least by the Swedish state-owned rail incumbent SJ itself.

• However, just before the deadline for mandatory tendering across the EU, SJ is attempting one final direct award of money just for itself – which will increase the burden on the taxpayer.

Over the past two years, SJ has been actively lobbying authorities and the tourism industry in Jämtland (Sweden) and Trøndelag (Norway) for direct Stockholm-Trondheim services. While being presented as an SJ “investment”, it would actually be funded by taxpayers and probably create a monopoly.

For this new service, SJ plans to use 1980s locomotives and wagons, currently operating the non-subsidised Stockholm-Östersund-Åre route, aiming to replace the regional Trondheim-Storlien and Storlien-Åre-Östersund routes, which are currently competitively tendered whilst long distance services are commercially viable (Open Access).

SJ now seeks directly awarded subsidy, negotiating its own exclusive taxpayer-funded compensation for running the service. The company wants more than 50M SEK (4,380,663 EUR) in annual government support for the direct trains: 25M SEK from Swedish taxpayers and 29M SEK from Norwegian taxpayers. By the end of this month, due to the EU 4th Railway Package (which Sweden agreed to), direct awards of this kind will no longer be possible.

SJ’s newly proposed ’investment’ would mean that even its daytime trains between Stockholm and Jämtland will be subsidised by taxpayers, which is not the case today. Meanwhile, any new competitors in the future will have to compete against the taxpayer.

Instead: to reduce the taxpayer burden, increase efficiency and drive modal shift to rail, regional traffic in Sweden should continue to be competitively tendered.

Meanwhile, long-distance commercially viable Open Access services should be encouraged by a handful of non-invasive measures:

  • Impartial Ticket Retail: All Rail Tickets At All Rail Ticket Vendors – a very easy technical change in Sweden (just the tick of a box);
  • Reduced Track Access Fees and Lower/No VAT;
  • Fair access to the 1980s rolling stock (that SJ inherited from the taxpayer);

ALLRAIL’s President Dr Erich Forster says: “Rather than ignoring key provisions of the Single European Rail Area, ALLRAIL urges the Swedish Government, the Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket), and the Norwegian Railway Directorate (Jernbanedirektoriatet) to step back from unjustified taxpayer funded rail services.”