THE ALTERNATIVE DRAFT LAW ON REFORMING THE RAILWAY TRANSPORT MARKET

As previously reported (see the information on the website in the News section for October 23 and November 04), the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved the draft Law of Ukraine “On the System and Peculiarities of the Ukrainian Railway Transport Market Functioning” and submitted it to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (Reg. No. 12142 of October 21, 2024).

The MP of Ukraine M.S. Magomedov, as a subject of the right of legislative initiative, submitted an alternative draft law “On the System and Peculiarities of the Ukrainian Railway Transport Market Functioning”(reg. No. 12142-1 of November 06, 2024), which proposes, in particular, to regulate the following issues

– ensuring equal distribution of infrastructure capacity and ensuring efficient transportation for customers;

– the need to resolve the issue of disposing of non-core and surplus assets of the infrastructure operator, including the establishment of a separate company to deal with non-core assets and disputed liabilities;

– resolving the issue of inactive infrastructure and creating conditions for its effective functioning;

– to regulate the list of mandatory services for access to strategic infrastructure;

– ensuring non-discriminatory access to technical control points for locomotives and wagons;

– assigning to the National Commission for State Regulation of Transport the authority to approve the tariff for mandatory services for access to public infrastructure and approve the level of profitability of the infrastructure operator;

– compensating for the misuse of the investment component of the tariff by reducing the tariff in subsequent periods;

– ending the practice of cross-subsidizing passenger transportation;

– Reform of JSC “Ukrzaliznytsia”;

– implementing all necessary procedures to open a competitive rail transportation market;

– exempting the operator of public railway transport infrastructure from paying land tax for railway transport land under public railway transport infrastructure.

The said alternative draft law, as well as the draft law under Reg. No. 12142, shall enter into force five years after the date of termination or abolition of martial law on the territory of Ukraine, except for certain provisions that shall enter into force on the day following the day of publication of this Law.

The Law of Ukraine “On Railway Transport” shall cease to be effective from the date of entry into force of this Law

By the way, more details about the problems with the adoption of previous draft laws on railway transport and the draft law on the register No. 12142 can be found in the article “The Ghost of the Law on Railway Transport” on the website of the Center for Transportation Strategies https://cfts.org.ua/ in the “Analytics” section.

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