The Security Platform chairman represented by Atul Srivastava from the Railway Protection Force of Indian Railways and the vice-chairman Gerd Neubeck from DBAG attended this first meeting of the year.
Jerzy Wisniewski, UIC Director for Fundamental Values, welcomed all the participants and introduced Jochen Grimmelt who is seconded to UIC from DBAG for three years. He has joined the Security Division and replaces José Pires from 1 February 2016.
In addition to the report of the chairs of the working groups, activities and partners’ organisations, a discussion was held on the additional programme that was approved by the UIC General Assembly in December 2015.
The agreed approach to address this new security project is to have a co-lead for each topic with one member of the security team and one representative from a railway company:
- 1st topic: Interoperability and exchange of security-related information for international trains – Marie-Hélène Bonneau and PKP-PLK
- 2nd topic: Training and Communication – Virginie Papillault and SNCF
- 3rd topic: Benchmarking on crisis management – Jochen Grimmelt and DBAG
For each topic, a questionnaire on the existing situation and the expectations will be circulated to all UIC members. A synthesis workshop will be organised in June 2016, then a draft deliverable will be provided and validated during a second workshop organised in October 2016.
Another key issue was also addressed during this steering committee: the huge number of refugees that are travelling across Europe, especially in Germany and Austria. Gerd Neubeck said that this is a big concern for railways: thousands of people to be carried by train from the borders to different cities which requires additional trains and people management in stations.
Many countries in the Schengen area have restored checks at their borders, thus trains will have to stop at the frontier and it will change the whole traffic system within Europe.
Hans-Günther Kersten (HK) mentioned that there is also a concern for rail freight operators due to the measures that are imposed and go against the seamless transport of goods.
It was thus decided to hold a workshop on this topic in June 2016 to help the rail community address this refugee issue and to prepare a position paper on these aspects, to be discussed with CER if there is a need to raise the issue at European level.
Following the decision in India, during the 11th Word Security Congress, a second seminar dedicated to terrorism is also planned in June after the first one held on 16 – 17 June 2015 on the theme “Coping with terrorism/the role of human factors”.
In order to organise the work and meetings in the most efficient way, all the scheduled workshops/seminars will be brought together in a Security Week from 20 – 24 June, at UIC HQ.
SAVE THE DATE: UIC Security Week from 20 to 24 June 2016 with several events addressing, among others:
- Terrorism
- Interoperability and exchange of security-related information for international trains
- Training and Communication
- Benchmarking on crisis management
- Refugees
All presentations are available in the dedicated security workspace of the UIC extranet system at http://extranet.uic.org/
