Status: 04/16/2023 04:44 am
The CDU and CSU want to separate the rail network, the stations and the energy sector from the railway company. The goal is a bundling in a federal infrastructure GmbH. What does the Union expect from this?
In order to end the ongoing problems at Deutsche Bahn, the CDU and CSU propose splitting up the group. As the “Augsburger Allgemeine” reports, citing a reform paper by the Union faction in the Bundestag, the network, train stations and energy divisions are to be separated from the group and bundled in a federal infrastructure GmbH. “Infrastructure and transport areas are separated from each other,” says the concept.
The CSU traffic expert Ulrich Lange was instrumental in developing the concept. “The rail network and everything that goes with it should be in the hands of the state in the future, in the form of a GmbH,” he told the newspaper. The Union uses the Federal Motorway Company as a model for the Infrastructure GmbH. “The holding company of Deutsche Bahn and its countless holdings and subsidiaries will be dissolved,” said Lange. According to the reform proposal, only the rolling departments for local transport, long-distance transport and freight transport would remain with Deutsche Bahn, which should also be streamlined.
The federal government should be able to decide for itself
The federal government should then be able to decide independently of the railway company which routes will be renovated, upgraded or newly built. “A major advantage of the new, lean structure will be that in future the federal government will not only be able to specify which routes are to be built or modernized, but that its specifications must also be implemented,” emphasized Lange.
With the current structure, the CSU politician believes that the railways can neither meet current business nor the ambitious growth targets in long-distance and freight transport. The break-up of the railway group would mean that private competitors would have better chances of snatching market shares from the market leader. “The separation of network and operation will also have a positive effect on competition, since providers other than Deutsche Bahn can use the rail network more than before.”
Union goes further with their plan than the coalition
With its advance, the Union goes much further than the traffic light coalition, which according to its current agreements only wants to merge the divisions network and stations. According to the coalition plans, Deutsche Bahn would remain the integrated group that determines the network and operations. In contrast to the government alliance, the CDU and CSU advocate keeping the freight forwarding subsidiary Schenker with Deutsche Bahn in any case. Schenker is the earnings pearl of the railway and last year contributed the lion’s share of the operating profit, while long-distance and local transport as well as the freight division made losses. “As an internationally active logistics service provider, DB Schenker must remain in the hands of the federal government. This is of strategic importance, especially in view of competitors such as China,” says the reform paper.
In a special report for the Bundestag, the Federal Court of Auditors also called for infrastructure and operations to be separated at Deutsche Bahn. The owner federal government must “restructure the group effectively, comprehensively and quickly”, he needs control over the rail network.