The Industrial College of the Armed Forces, the American military educational institution for future US officers, once again asked UIC to make room for its current cohort of US senior service officers to visit the railway association while in France as part of their European field trip, and asked the UIC security division to organise various meetings and presentations on the achievements and prospects of railway transport.

On 4 May 2012, Jerzy Wisniewski, Director of UIC’s Fundamental Values department, gave a global overview of UIC on behalf of Director-General Jean-Pierre Loubinoux, who had another commitment abroad.

The issues of freight and combined transport, together with the preparation of the 3rd Global Rail Freight Conference scheduled to be held in Tangier from 17 – 19 October 2012, were presented by Sandra Gehenot, while Naoto Yanase spoke about high speed, and referred to UIC HIGHSPEED 2012, which is to take place in July 2012.

In the area of security Mr Sylvain Xié spoke on behalf of the Ministry of Ecology in charge of transport about France’s organisation with regard to transport security and defence, and Marie-Hélène Bonneau from UIC presented the main European research projects involving the security division.

Finally Jacques Colliard recalled the role of the security platform and mentioned the UIC World Security Congress to be held in Bratislava (24 – 26 October 2012), following that of Rome in 2011 and Istanbul in 2010. Mr Colliard accompanied the US delegation to the RATP (Paris metropolitan transit system) on Monday 7 May to visit the joint control room shared by RATP and the police and to listen to RATP’s presentation on their implementation plans to make the network more secure.