Contradicting the Secretary of State for Transport, Dominique Bussereau, Didier Le Reste stated on France-Info that "since the opening up of rail freight to competition, we have had a spate of incidents and avoidable accidents, which bring the private freight operators into question.”

Earlier on Europe-1 channel, Secretary of State for Transport Dominique Bussereau had stated that there was "no" security breach, and that "privatisation and these incidents have nothing in common" in the wake of the accident between two freight trains, in Charente, which has greatly disrupted the movement of TGV between Paris and the Southwest.

Didier Le Reste himself itself noted that "when a public enterprise is managed on private sector criteria, the red line ie the financial return, we can see that behind it are also looking for the reduction of operating costs, production, and this also affects the level of training of railway employees."

"Rail safety cannot become a variable adjustment of liberal policies, in the name of competition and liberalisation as they are pushed by the European Union," warned the General Secretary of the CGT railworkers.

"I hear of great leaders of private operators at European level that the constraints associated with rail safety is now such that they can not do business as they heard on the rails", he said.

For the union, "it is necessary to establish the policeman of the rail control structures under the authority and responsibility of public authorities with means to enable the working time, the level of training, and conditions of security and network operations" he said.

See also:

The crazy train of free market competition

l'Humanité: 21 May 2009
Pierre-Henri Lab

A collision between two freight trains caused a major disruption to rail traffic on Wednesday between Paris and Bordeaux. The railworkers’ trade unions have complained it was a result of liberalisation.

A Black Wednesday for rail users who planned to visit Bordeaux yesterday from Montparnasse station in Paris. Rail traffic was completely halted all morning in both directions. Overall, on this day before the Ascension weekend public holiday in France, 20,000 passengers suffered delays or cancellations according to SNCF. Train movements were not able to resume until Thursday at about 13.00 hours. Normal traffic was only resumed yesterday morning.

The cause of this incident was a collision between two freight trains in the early hours of Thursday morning, near Angouleme in the Charente. According to a union official from the CGT railway section in Bordeaux, the accident occurred south of Angoulême in the Livernan tunnel. A trainload of tractors, obviously poorly-secured, hauled by ECR (Euro Cargo Rail), a subsidiary of German railway company Deutsche Bahn, shifted "fouling the adjacent line”. Travelling from Paris to Bordeaux, the convoy "clashed" when passing another freight train belonging to SNCF. The injured SNCF driver was hospitalized. He suffered a broken wrist. The collision also caused extensive damage. The SNCF locomotive was badly damaged, with torn cables, while the derailment of an axle caused a deformation in the track further delaying the resumption of traffic. These facts highlighted the violence of the collision. "What would have happened if it had been a passenger train? We fear that people would have been injured or worse!" said Didier Le Reste, CGT general secretary.

Surprisingly, the ECR train had been involved a few moments before in an earlier incident, but didn’t stop. Thus, the press release from the CGT Bordeaux section reported "a first strike" occurred with another freight train. Although less serious, this collision had not forced the two trainloads to stop. However, when changing drivers at Angoulême station, the new SNCF driver, noticed the damage and refused to leave.

Commenting on the crash, the rail unions have called into question the liberalisation of railway traffic. "The pursuit of profit is leading companies to cut back on jobs, working conditions, operational procedures and training," is the accusation from SUD-Rail, the third largest union at SNCF. The same point is made by CGT, the majority union. Its General Secretary, Didier Le Reste calls for the creation of "a railway policeman", which "under the auspices of the government, similarly to what exists for road transport, would be responsible for verifying in real-time the length of the working day, the working conditions, operational and safety standards of train drivers."

The Secretary of State for Transport has rejected any link between liberalisation and the rail accident. Interviewed yesterday on TV channel France 2, Dominique Bussereau spoke of "human error" when loading the train in Germany, announced an investigation and promised sanctions.

However, this accident is not an isolated event but the latest in a long series involving private competitors of SNCF. On 26 April 2008, a train owned by the Veolia company ran out of control through Montauban railway station at over 60 km/h. Without the presence of mind of SNCF staff, who at the last moment managed to divert it, it would have struck a crowded TER (regional) passenger train.