European rail shippers’ lobby group, The House of Rail (HoR), welcomed the announcement yesterday, saying it had been nine years since member states had approved the legislation or accepted it on accession to the EU and very little had been done since.

A letter from the EC now gives countries two months to come up with proposals to resolve issues such as: the lack of independence between infrastructure managers and operators; failure to set up independent regulatory bodies with powers to remedy competition issues; and failure to implement required changes over track access charging.

HoR said the commission had also published lists of the failures of member states, and comparisons with a similar list published in June 2008.