On 24 April 2014 the meeting of the Passenger and Commercial Distribution Forum took place at UIC Headquarters in Paris. These meetings take place twice a year and it is the forum where decisions on technical and commercial issues for passengers are taken.
UIC was represented by the Director of the Passenger Department, Mr Ignacio Barrón, and Mr Josef Fazik, Mr Luis Casado and Mr Marc Guigon, Senior Advisors, and several railway undertakings from across Europe took part this meeting, that was last chaired by Marc Giesen, who has moved to another position within his company, Deutsche Bahn.

Given this situation, Mr Rütger Fenkes, also from DB, was appointed the new chairman of the Forum, whereas Mr Samuel Schauss from SNCF was appointed the new vice-chairman. The chairmanship of the Commercial Group has been filled by Mr Rodrigo Hilario, from RENFE.

The Forum went through all the projects that integrate the Commercial and the Technical Passenger aspects at UIC, approving new commercial policies and technical measures in order to improve the quality of services offered to passengers.

Mr Marc Giesen explained the issues of the Commercial Group, and Mr Christopher Querée presented the developments of the activities of the Technical Group over which he presides. The state-of-the-art of the Merits/Prifis and TAP-TSI groups were presented by Mr Guigon and Mr Fenkes respectively.

Mr Josef Fazik presented the new situation of the RIC (Rigolamento Internazionale delle Carozze) with the adaptation to the European legislation, and UIC plans to extend this regulation around the world. Finally, the budgets for 2015 for the different groups were agreed upon.

At the end of the meeting, the dates for the 2015 meetings were chosen. The next Forum will take place on 6 November, again at UIC Headquarters in Paris.