Following the meeting of the UIC Regional Assembly for Europe on 15 June, a reception was held at UIC Headquarters in Paris in honour of Hartmut Mehdorn, Chairman of the Board of Management of Deutsche Bahn (DB), who stepped down from office as the head of the German railways in late March, simultaneously relinquishing the chairmanship of the Regional Assembly for Europe. Numerous chief executives of railway undertakings and the heads of the European associations, Johannes Ludewig and Bert Klerk (CER) and Michael Robson (EIM) joined UIC Chairman Yoshio Ishida, UIC Vice-Chairman (and CER Chairman) Mauro Moretti, the current UIC Europe Chairman Guillaume Pépy and the UIC Director General Jean-Pierre Loubinoux to pay tribute to Mr Mehdorn.

Addressing Mr Mehdorn, UIC Director General Jean-Pierre Loubinoux hailed “this great captain of industry, a man of vision and ambitious business projects, a man of courage and conviction, above all an international leader who has spent ten years working at the highest level overseeing issues of railway cooperation, in particular in heading UIC bodies”.

Guillaume Pépy, SNCF Chairman and current Chairman of the UIC Regional Assembly for Europe, paid tribute to the quality of the cooperative and personal relationships each member of the railway community had been able to forge with Mr Mehdorn. Mr Mehdorn himself spoke in his speech of the major challenges facing rail transport today, first and foremost those of competition with the road sector and sustainable development, but reiterated his full confidence in UIC and its capacity to work effectively in close collaboration with its members and other partners such as CER and EIM to make rail transport more competitive and strengthen its position on international markets.