Rail sector
Our Rail Competence Team offers comprehensive advice on all essential industry topics. This includes transport and forwarding contracts, licensing, purchase and rental of railway vehicles, maintenance contracts, handling of railway accidents and recourse claims, also for insurers, as well as industry-specific employment law.
In addition, we advise railway undertakings and further market participants on regulatory and public-law topics. In doing so, we support in particular with questions of network access as well as track access and usage charges and accompany our clients in proceedings before the Federal Network Agency. In addition, we advise and represent market participants in approval and other regulatory authority proceedings as well as in court proceedings on rail-specific legal questions before national courts and the CJEU.
In cooperation arrangements with competitors and corporate transactions, including antitrust-law questions, our clients also rely on our expertise. Here, we accompany market abuse proceedings, merger controls and merger notifications and advise on compliance topics as well as on distribution antitrust law.
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.
In addition, we offer tailor-made in-house seminars, e.g. on ‘Legal issues in rail freight transport’. You can find more information here.
Brochure Rail Capabilities
Network
We can support you with the following:
- 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
Your contacts
Focus on rail sector
Our partner Michael Niermann was a guest speaker at the personnel working group of the DIE GÜTERBAHNEN association and gave a comprehensive overview of key issues for personnel managers in a rail transport company.
Deutsche Bahn is planning extensive general refurbishments on the high-speed corridors in the coming years. These require consultation between DB InfraGO and the parties entitled to access. The basis for this is DB InfraGO guideline 402.0305, which sets tight deadlines for comments.