Rail sector

Our rail sector competence team offers comprehensive advice on all matters relating to this sector. This includes transport and forwarding contracts, authorisations, purchases and leases of railway vehicles, maintenance contracts, handling of railway accidents and sector-specific employment law issues. In addition, we assist our clients in the complex areas of procurement, regulation and supervision. This includes tenders, appeals and applications for exemptions as well as licences and administrative measures.

Our clients also rely on our expertise in cooperations with competitors and corporate transactions, including antitrust issues. In antitrust law, we also represent with market abuse proceedings, merger controls and notification procedures and advise on compliance issues and distribution antitrust law.

We regularly assist our clients in proceedings before national and European courts (General Court / European Court of Justice) relating to the specific issues of rail transport.

Our team combines specialized, cross-jurisdictional expertise with a deep understanding of rail transport and its technical aspects. It knows the industry and has been supporting the players on the path to rail privatization in Europe for over two decades. We regularly publish as authors in leading specialist journals on current legal issues affecting the industry. Lectures and in-house trainings round off our range of activities.

We can assist you in these areas:

• Contract drafting
• Personnel issues, including collective labour law
• Authorisation, purchase and lease of railway vehicles
• M&A transactions
• Tenders
• Cartel law issues
• Handling of railway accidents
• Representation before the EU Agency for Railways (ERA), the German Federal Railway Authority (EBA) and the state supervisory authorities (Landesaufsicht)
• Representation before the German Federal Network Agency (BNetzA)
• Representation before the German civil and administrative courts as well as the General Court and the Court of Justice of the EU