Legal Issues on the Development of Economic Competition in the Field of Railway Transport

Abstract

The article highlights the current problems of economic competition in the field of railway transport, as well as identifies areas for the development of relevant legislation. It is noted that the competitive rail freight market has currently being formed. Moreover, the tariff system and the public management in the field of rail transport have being reformed in accordance with EU legislation. The author supports the idea of separating the monopoly sector (the ownership of strategic infrastructure of railway transport), the potentially competitive sector (the market of freight mainline locomotives that includes the private mainline locomotives providing rail transportation) and the competitive sector (rendering services for the carriage of goods and passengers by rail). The author emphasizes that implementation of the competitive terms in mentioned area challenges the appropriate legal framework in order to ensure the demonopolization of the locomotive traction market, separating the functions of the railway operator and the infrastructure operator, formatting the tariff policy with incentives. The researcher concludes that a balanced legal policy is needed, taking into account the interests of the state, business, railway industry. In addition, it is necessary to create the adequate legal basis for the development of fair economic competition in the field of rail freight transportation. It is noted that the priority tasks are as follows: creating a national commission as an independent regulatory body for natural monopolies in the field of transport, in particular in the field of railway transport; adopting the specific Law of Ukraine "On Railway Transport", amending the Economic Code of Ukraine in terms of concluding commercial agreements on the organization of transportation, in particular electronic ones; supplementing transportation participants with new entities, such as the infrastructure operator, the railway transportation operator.