After 15 months of work, the EU project PROTECTRAIL, which aims to improve security through better protection of railways and trains and to reduce disparity in security between European railway systems, held its first project review on 6 December with Andrej Grebenc, Project Officer at REA (Research Executive Agency).

This review brings together the partners of the consortium. Following the presentation of the project status by Carlo Dambra, technical coordinator from Ansaldo, each subproject leader presented the results of the subproject with the results achieved, the difficulties encountered and the next steps.

At this stage, the project is on the right track and the expected results have been achieved. In addition to the participation of many railways and transport authorities, the project should benefit from the involvement of law enforcement representatives and also from human rights experts on the project’s advisory board.

The project officer congratulated the partners on their work and underlined that the project had two main strengths: very efficient coordination by Ansaldo and excellent dissemination through UIC.

Vito Siciliano, PROTECTRAIL coordinator from Ansaldo, concluded the meeting and thanked the project officer. He pointed out that for now the main objectives have been achieved and that he was confident in the results of the project which will open new opportunities.

Reminder: The project led by Ansaldo STS Spa started in September 2010 for a duration of 42 months and at a total cost of 21 million €. Six railways companies are involved in the consortium and act as end-users: LG (Lithuania), PKP PLK SA (Poland), RFI (Italy), SNCF (France), TCDD (Turkey) and ZSSK (Slovakia). The UIC Security Division is leading the dissemination subproject. The objective is to guarantee that the project results will satisfy user needs and fulfil railway requirements, and in particular that proposed solutions are feasible for implementation from an economical, organisational and operational perspective.