RFC North Sea-Med stays fully committed to supporting rail freight in these challenging times

Welcome to the website of RFC North Sea – Med!

Rail Freight Corridor North Sea-Med stays fully committed to supporting rail freight in these challenging times

During the year 2022 we tilted from the Covid crisis into a geopolitical crisis with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This war and the ensuing energy crisis prolong the period of uncertainty that we face since the start of the Covid crisis and affects the customers of the Corridor.

This situation translates into a limited drop in traffic on RFC North Sea – Med, leading to a fifth year of decline in train numbers.

The Executive Board and Management Board are permanently monitoring the evolution and investigating underlying causes. They remain committed to reverse this negative trend.

Notwithstanding this ongoing decline, the Corridor has maintained its close proximity to its customers and partners throughout 2022.

Whether through the action of the C-OSS to assist our customers individually in the preparation of their train path orders, or through bilateral meetings or the organization of several webinars, RFC North Sea-Med has continued to emphasize this proximity to its customers, a guarantee of trust and efficiency in the performance of each of our missions.

In this respect, the very good cooperation between all players involved in the Lyon - Bettembourg Quality Circle Operation launched by the Corridor in 2020 made it possible to significantly improve punctuality from Bettembourg in 2022. Indeed, it was nearly 20 percentage points higher than in 2021 (67% of departures on time compared to 48% in 2021 !). These good results led us to promote the method through a video presented at the ‘Connecting Europe Days’ organized by the European Commission in Lyon in June 2022.

In 2023, the Corridor should extend this experience to other terminals.

In 2022 also, the European Commission decided to continue its support of the corridor activities until  2024, by means of a ‘Technical Assistance’ financing. This decision was very positively received by the Executive and Management Board members of the Corridor, as it certainly helps to secure the functioning of RFC North Sea – Med in the upcoming years.

Moreover, the European Commission has also decided to finance the Corridor for its «capacity visualisation project” that is a follow-up of the proof of concept of 2021, which aims to create a visualisation and indicators dedicated to capacity issues that could help decision-makers. It is a project for which we have great expectations and for which we should have results by the end of 2023.

And finally, 2022 was marked by regulatory changes affecting the Corridors: the proposed revision of the TEN-T Regulation and the first conclusions of the evaluation of the 913/2010 Regulation.

In this regard, 2022 was marked by the first discussions on the merger of both Corridors North Sea-Med and Rhine-Alpine, which will be continued in 2023 alongside with proposals for changes in the organization of capacity allocation in Europe.

While awaiting these developments, the Permanent Team, the members of the Management Board and the Executive Board, in cooperation with the Terminal and Railway undertaking Advisory Groups, will continue their mission of offering train paths, coordinating track works and monitoring performance in order to keep on facilitating international rail freight flows.

You will find in this site all the information concerning the activities of the corridor. If you do not find the information you are looking for, do not hesitate to contact our team directly.

Enjoy your visit!