NMa fines ProRail more than € 800,000

The Netherlands Competition Authority (NMa) is imposing fines totalling € 826,000 and an order for incremental penalty payments on ProRail because of violations of the Railways Act. ProRail, the manager of the Dutch rail network, has failed to abide by the regulations of the Railways Act which aim to guarantee that railway companies can fairly and properly make use of the primary rail infrastructure. 'Our investigation indicates that ProRail not only misinformed the railway companies, but provided them with incomplete information. In addition to this, after capacity had already been distributed for service in the year 2007, ProRail went ahead and allocated capacity to its own company at the expense of the capacity that had already been allocated to the railway companies,' says Pieter Kalbfleisch, chairman of the Board of the NMa. 'It is very important that the regulations which guarantee access to the railway infrastructure are applied fairly and without discrimination. Only then are the railway companies able to offer their customers, the travellers and shippers, a good product, specifically a train that runs on time.'

Allocation of capacity for 2007
The allocation of rail capacity among the railway companies and ProRail as manager is one of ProRail's core tasks. The NMa has ascertained that ProRail acted in violation of the Railways Act in allocating capacity for scheduling in 2007. ProRail allocated capacity for the maintenance schedule to ProRail Infra Management, the division of ProRail that maintains the rail infrastructure, even though the term for allocating capacity for scheduling in 2007 had already expired. Moreover the railway companies had to surrender capacity already allotted to them to ProRail, as a result of which they had to change their timetables. The NMa as competition authority places a high priority on strict adherence to the terms and procedures, so as to allocate the scarce capacity on the rails as properly and fairly as possible. Transport companies have no other choice, they must rely on ProRail. NMa therefore imposed a fine of € 776,000 for this violation.



Network declaration 2008

Further investigation by the NMa also indicated that the Network declaration 2008 does not satisfy the requirements of the Railways Act. The Network declaration describes the available infrastructure and contains information on the conditions for access to and use of this infrastructure. The NMa has ascertained that this declaration is not correct, adequate or complete on a number of points. The procedure for allocating capacity for instance is not correctly described and in practice different processing periods apply for capacity requests submitted in writing and those submitted digitally, while the requests are processed in order of receipt. It is crucial that the railway companies know exactly what procedure they must follow and which processing terms these entail. The NMa is imposing a fine of € 50,000 for these and other shortcomings in the Network declaration 2008. The NMa has also imposed an order for incremental penalty payments requiring ProRail to amend the points in the Network declaration indicated by the NMa in order to undo the violation within two months.


The investigation in these cases was carried out by the Office of Transport Regulation, the division of the NMa that exercises supervision on the transport sector on the basis of the Railways Act. Supervision on capacity allocation in the rail sector is one of the NMa's priorities for this year.