On 5 July UIC, represented by Messrs Jacques Colliard and José Pires (Security Division), together with the other transport sector organisations, attended the European Commission’s 2nd Meeting of the Land Transport Security Expert Group under the coordination of the Directorate General for Mobility and Transport (DG MOVE). The meeting was held in Brussels, bringing together Member State authorities (morning session) and transport sector stakeholders in a joint session.
Chaired by Mr Robert Missen, the session was opened by Mrs Marjeta Jager who reinforced the idea that the coordination between Member State authorities and transport sector stakeholders is essential to further prevent, manage and mitigate the risk of criminality, with the exchange of best practice being the most appropriate approach to Land Transport Security at EU level.
In this respect the Land Transport Security Expert Group work structure and next meetings will be managed considering specific themes accordingly with the list of priorities agreed between the Member State authorities and transport sector stakeholders, and that DG MOVE will accordantly present a work programme in the autumn.
It was in this context that DG MOVE presented the transport sector stakeholders consultation outcome on the Commission’s Staff Working Document. The results demonstrate the sector viewpoint, highlighting the most relevant security issues (in parallel with terrorism), as they strongly impact transport sector users and companies’ security management.
Therefore the result of this consultation together with DG MOVE’s assessment, is leading to prioritisation of staff training (security and non-security staff), secure lorry parking, cyber-crime in transport, risk assessment (modelling and methodologies) and metal theft in the railways.
Participants also agreed that the development of the work within those areas must avoid any kind of duplication, particularly in the field of research.
As pointed out by UIC, many past and current EU projects are exploiting valuable information that can and should be taken into account when considering the furture land transport security framework. These projects offer us the opportunity to obtain the state-of-the-art on the latest security technologies, to provide the industry with the current and future land transport security needs and to contribute to a coherent and balanced use of security measures among EU transport sector stakeholders.
Furthermore DG MOVE informed participants that two studies are being launched through open calls for tender concerning a meta-analysis study on “Establishing best practice in counterterrorism at operational, tactical and strategic levels for multi-modal passenger terminals” and “Study on land transport security regarding high speed trains”.
Additionally a ‘Study on land transport cyber criminality’ will be also launched in the coming weeks with the aim of supporting the work of DG CONNECT within the scope of the EU Cyber Security Strategy on the Network and Information Security (NIS) Public-Private Platform initiative (see UIC eNews 351).
The Commission’s sharing of best practice and specific themes meetings approach was considered very positive and the transport sector stakeholders sense that the land transport security issues are taken well into account within users and business needs.
Mr Robert Missen finalised the meeting by reconfirming that DG MOVE, with the support of the Land Transport Security experts, will achieve results that reflect the emerging transport security issues by working in a cooperative and collaborative process.
The next Land Transport Security Expert Group is planned to be held during the last quarter of 2013, where the EC Land Transport Security 2014 work programme will be presented.
