United in adversity? On the socio-technical dynamics behind the opposition to the Single European Railway Area by national transport administrative authorities regarding the liberalization of the passengers’ market

The Single European Railway Area is a comprehensive EU programme fostering the interdependence of railway grids among Member States, as well as the progressive opening of passengers’ market to competition. In order to achieve these objectives, the Commission and the legislator progressively ensured the consolidation of the prerogatives of independent administrative authorities (IAAs) in charge of enforcing and supervising the implementation of the Fourth Railway package that foresaw the complete opening of the passengers’ market by December 2023. The main logic behind the empowerment of administrative authorities was the sidelining of national executives in administering railway management, since these authorities would be considered to close to the pre-existing state monopolies (called incumbents). IAAs would thus ensure that competition for the market does not unduly favor incumbents. Competition would lead to lead to a foreseen lowering of prices and make rail an attractive intermodal transport mean for consumers, allowing at the same time the Commission to crystallize its meta-objective enshrined in the Green Deal of fostering a decarbonized economy by promoting the "greener" means of public transportation available. Yet nearly a year after the deadline of liberalizing the market, the entry into the railway sector of private undertaking remains scarce, and public tendering often favors the incumbent. Part of this implementation failure resides in the active role of the bodies in charge of enforcing this policy, i.e. Rail IAAs themselves. These IAAs are made of two groups: rail regulators and infrastructure managers. The former ensure that competition is open to private undertakings, whereas the latter (often part of the structure of incumbents) shall provide for access to tracks for undertakings winning the competitive tendering process. Both groups impede one way or the other liberalization, either because of their opposition to the Commission or because of conflicting objectives between regulators and infrastructures managers. Opposition to the Commission is raised because DG Move (the DG in charge of supervising the Single Railway Area) would neglect the nature of rail transport as a "public service" and would almost exclusively concentrate on pan-European lines, even if most of the network (more than 90 percent) remains exclusively national. Regulators thus formed their independent regulators’ group (IRG-Rail) that constitutes a mighty lobbying group opposing further developments of pan-European regulation. Internal conflicts between regulators and infrastructure managers stem from competing objectives arising out of the division of labor enshrined by EU law itself. Regulators must promote competition on the tracks but cannot bypass the opposition of managers arguing that the network is already saturated and cannot provide for new entrants on the market. In order to describe this union in adversity, the paper draws its inspiration on political sociology and Science Technology Studies, and investigates the behavior of national IAAs by using process-tracing combining archival work and semi-structured interviews with national civil servants in France, Portugal, Poland and Romania.