La Red de Alta Velocidad Europea: Más un mosaico poco efectivo que una realidad

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90. Directive (EU) No 2012/34/EU 51 requires track access charges to be set primarily on the
basis of the costs directly incurred as a result of operating the train service. But the
principles used to determine pricing across Member States differ significantly 52 , mainly
because the legislation allows many parameters to be used. In all visited Member States,
“mark-ups” had been applied to take into account specific cost categories, such as the time
of day of the requested slot or the presence, or absence, of a bottleneck.
91. The International Union of Railways has reported that track access charges are not
calculated transparently. They regularly change, and are subject to no less than 56 variables,
leading to very different outcomes. This is confirmed by Figure 8, which shows the exact
level of track access charges on selected EU origin-destination pairs connected by high-speed
rail, demonstrating that charging levels are indeed very different. For example, track access
charges are very high in France, and much lower in Italy.
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Directive 2012/34/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 November 2012
establishing a single European railway area Text with EEA relevance (OJ L 343, 14.12.2012,
p. 32).
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For example: in Italy, access charges do not only include the direct costs but also other costs of
the IM that the authority considers “efficient and reasonable”, while in Germany the TAC policy
aims to recover a high proportion of infrastructure costs from train operating companies. In
Austria, the TACs are based on operating costs; in France, TACs are built around two criteria: an
operation pillar, using econometric models to assess the marginal costs determined by the
exploitation of the line (around 30 % of the total value) and an economic-value pillar which is
set to extract “as high an access charge as train operators can afford” (around 70 % of the total
value). In Spain, they are intended to cover direct costs.