PRR Application
1) General context
Regulation (EC) No 1371/2007 on rail passengers’ rights and obligations (PRR) was adopted by the European Parliament and the Council on 23 October 2007 as part of the Third Railway Package. Its objective is to strengthen the rights of passengers by rail, to improve the quality of rail services and to increase rail’s modal share. It entered into force on 3 December 2009.
2) Scope of the PRR: exemptions granted by Member States
The PRR creates a new legal framework for both international and domestic traffic by rail within the European Community. It does so by superimposing itself on the international conventions in force (COTIF/CIV and SMPS) and on the national law of every EU Member State. The legal position is quite complex because of the variety of exemptions which Member States will or may grant (see table under "Passenger traffic"). In addition to different geographical scope, the various bodies of law don’t bear on the same issues (i.e. have the same subject matter): the international conventions cover “contracts of carriage” whereas the PRR concerns itself with “transport services” and the two don’t always match up.
The scope of the PRR was the subject of hard bargaining between the European Parliament and the Commission in 2007. The result, Article 2 of the PRR, may be summarised as follows:
- international services and journeys wholly within the Community are covered by the PRR;
- all domestic, regional, suburban and urban services and journeys within EU Member States are covered
by Articles 9, 11, 12, 19, 20 § 1 and 26 PRR as a minimum. EU Member States may grant exemptions
from the other articles of the PRR to all domestic services for a limited period (up to fifteen years) and
to regional, suburban and urban services for an unlimited period;
- international services and journeys between the European Community and non-Member States of the EU
are covered within the European Community by Articles 9, 11, 12, 19, 20 § 1 and 26 of the PRR as a
minimum. EU Member States may grant exemptions from the other articles of the PRR if a significant
part of the service is operated outside the Community.
3) GCC-CIV/PRR: standardisation of passengers’ contracts of carriage
The CIT has drawn up a contractual document which brings the three bodies of law (international, community and national) together. The document in question is the “General Conditions of Carriage for Rail Passengers” (GCC-CIV/PRR). The CIT has made the GCC-CIV/PRR available to all its members who provide carriage by rail (which can include sections by road, sections by inland waterway or by sea). In the sense that they can be used:
- for international and domestic traffic in all OTIF Member States
- both for services exempted and not exempted from the PRR within EU Member States
- by all members of the CIT within or outside the EU
they are all-embracing.
In order to increase transparency and legal certainty, the CIT publishes a list of undertakings which have decided to base their contracts of carriage (or just some of them) on the GCC-CIV/PRR (see table under "Passenger traffic").
The GCC-CIV/PRR are a common denominator for all the CIT’s member undertakings and may thus be used as the base document on which member undertakings may construct their own general conditions (entitled “special conditions of carriage” in the GCC-CIV/PRR). Thus every carrier is free to draw up his own special conditions of carriage to meet his own needs, i.e. for routes, categories of train, or specific offers. In addition, there are special conditions for international carriage which apply to the various different types of international ticket (with or without integrated reservation) and to rail passes.
4) AIV: standardisation of the relationship between carriers for handling claims and applications for refunds from passengers
The CIT revised the Agreement concerning the Relationships between Transport Undertakings in respect of International Passenger Traffic by Rail (AIV) in order to reflect the new rules introduced by the PRR. The purpose of the agreement is to standardise the handling of passengers’ claims and applications for refund when several carriers are involved.
5) Seminars and workshops dedicated to the PRR
The CIT and UIC are organising a workshop for 4/5 May 2010 to assemble and compare undertakings’ experience with the PRR. This will the opportunity for an initial assessment of the documentation produced by the CIT and UIC.
6) Information for passengers
Passengers may refer to the www.railpassenger.info website for details of their rights. This site contains general information on rail services in Europe, on compensation for delay, on the arrangements for providing assistance to passengers with reduced mobility, on taking a bicycle, etc. In addition, it contains links to the websites of the major European railway undertakings. These undertakings’ websites contain details of the conditions applicable to the services they operate.
Under the heading “Passenger traffic/Legislation”, the CIT website contains all the relevant information about the statutory provisions and their scope together with the text of the GCC-CIV/PRR and the list of undertakings which apply them. The “Passenger traffic” section also contains a list of the customer services departments of CIT member undertakings and a list of the carrier-codes used on international tickets to allow carriers to be identified.