The battle for the use of Renfe workshops continues to give us new chapters. From the closed door and the complaint to the CNMC we have moved on to appeals to the latter’s decision and a crossroads of statements in which numbers are beginning to be put on the table.
The last to speak was Iryo.
What is happening? Iryo and Renfe have an open battle over the use of the latter company’s workshops. To understand all the keys:
What does Renfe say? What Renfe says is that the regulations only require them to hand over part of their facilities to their rivals to carry out light maintenance, but that is not the case when the work involves heavy maintenance. Iryo’s actions fall under this last definition and Renfe already reported in October that Ouigo was performing heavy maintenance on their facilities without their permission.
In addition, they point out that giving space to these trains from the Italian company will have a direct impact on their offer. If Iryo is occupying a space that Renfe had planned to use, the Spanish company estimates that they will have to withdraw from their offer around 1.2 million seatsof which more than one million fall within its Public Service Obligation (OSP). They estimate 60 million losses in income.
What does the CNMC say? The CNMC considers that Renfe would obtain a substantial competitive advantage if Iryo has to send its trains to Italy to carry out heavy maintenance. They consider that, if this happens, it would stop providing service with the affected trains for weeks. (as has happened in France) and that maintaining them without performing said maintenance is a danger to the safety of passengers.
For this reason, it forces Renfe to open its facilities and allow the Italian company to carry out these jobs with the employees it considers. In exchange, the Spanish company receives compensation as if it were a rental of the facilities.
What does Iryo say? Until now we have known the version and calculations of Renfe but not of Iryo. The Italian company assures that moving its trains to its country would mean a extra cost of 17 million euros and defends that they would only be occupying 7% of all Renfe facilities.
To estimate this extra cost, they calculate that if Iryo has to take the trains to Rome, they would stop being operational for about two months each, although, they point out in The Economistwhich on other occasions the company reduced this time horizon to one month.
This operational stoppage, Iryo points out, would be key in the market because they compete with 19 trains available in our country, while Renfe has 270 high-speed trains at its disposal. And they culminate their complaints by pointing out that these actions are scheduled based on mileage and that Renfe was aware that they would have to carry out these operations for months.
A music that sounds familiar to us. The truth is that railway liberalization in Europe has created a constant fight between operators that, as we are seeing, sometimes goes far beyond the tracks.
Renfe has pressed everything it can to prevent Iryo from carrying out these maintenance tasks at its facilities but has also recalled that the company has to work on all high speed lines and not only in the most profitable since, unlike Ouigo and Iryo, they work as a public service operator. Furthermore, remember that upon arrival Iryo committed to building his own workshops but no steps have been taken in that direction.
At the same time, it is logical that Iryo tries by all means to carry out its maintenance work in Spain to minimize its impact on the offer. And, as we said before, in France they have already forced the company to take your trains back to Italy to perform this type of maintenance. Country where Renfe has also encountered countless obstacles to deploy your servicesespecially in everything related to his arrival in Pariswhere the most profitable lines start.
Photo |Smiley.toerist and Renfe
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