The German Association VDEI and the French one (AFFI) held together a conference from October 24th to 26th in Strasbourg under the title: “French and German engineers faced to the railway challenge, an example for Europe”.
The attendance to this conference was numerous from both operators and supply industry sides (close to 200 persons), and an exhibition was organised in parallel in order to show experiences and share technical progress.
Several political figures and executives were speakers at the meeting: Mrs Keller, Strasbourg Mayor, Adrien Zeller, President of the Alsace Region, Margret Mergen, Deputy Mayor of Karlsruhe and Rudolf Köberle, Secretary of State from Baden-Wurtemberg Land. From the rail sector, Jacques Couvert and Mireille Faugère from SNCF, Patrick Trannoy from RFF and the Stuttgart regional Director from DB took the floor.
The conference was divided in 3 sessions:
– The railway expertise
o How to maintain and develop expertise within the railway world undergoing major changes
o Railway trainings in Germany and France
– The railway world, an interactive one, how to improve interaction between railways, market, environment and lands
– Innovations in the railway sector: is it necessary, which goals, which criteria, are there some limits to it?
Jonathan Scheele (Transport Trans European Network Director within the DG TREN of the Commission) and Luc Aliadière (UIC CEO) shared the conclusions of the meeting.
Jonathan Scheele, bringing a personal message from Commissioner Jacques Barrot, underlined the strong need for technical cooperation between German and French engineers in order to provide interoperable and cheap solutions for easy cross border services facilitating the railway business. Without this cooperation progress will be slow and costly.
Luc Aliadière spoke about the cultural differences between the French and Germans, stated that some issues are within the competition frame when some others are not, among which safety and interoperability issues. He also insisted on lowering the barriers and looking to the future: undertaking benchmark study in reference to other industrial sectors, building international railway training for engineers, and thinking diversified carrers for railway engineers. And he proposed to hold a new conference within 2 years in order to report on these issues.