EU regulation could rein in discounts for public transport by making municipal authorities more accountable for demands on fleet operators
By Greg Spencer
On the eve of Hungary's parliamentary elections in 1998, things looked grim for incumbent Premier Gyula Horn. His Social-Liberal coalition had instituted a harsh austerity programme and opposition parties were riding high on the public furore it provoked. Horn's campaign desperately needed some first-aid to patch up his bruised Socialist credentials. So just before the vote he made an announcement: Pensioners over 70 years of age could ride free on trains and public transportation.
The move was a time-honoured gambit of European politics, where state control over public transport makes it a handy electoral tool. In Hungary's case the 1998 decree failed to rescue the Horn government, but it saddled Budapest's public transport company, as well as the country's national rail system, MAV, with a financial burden that still exists today.
This kind of political fiddling is likely to become less common under a regulation agreed to in September by the European Parliament and European Commission.
According to the new stricture, cities whose public transport is run by independent companies will no longer be able to award fare discounts by unilateral decree. The regulation will require working relations between city administrations and their transport operators to be spelled out in detailed contracts, with agreed-upon funding for social discount compensation going from the city to the operator.
The regulation could have a particularly dramatic effect in new member states of the EU (as well as in candidate and aspiring member countries), where public transport administration is less evolved than in Western Europe. In candidate state Croatia, for example, just three municipalities have formal contracts with their public transport operators; the rest operate at the whim of politicians, and with all the financial insecurity that this situation entails.
