Deutsche Bahn: Transport Minister Wissing warns of break-up | EUROtoday

It was solely three years in the past that Volker Wissing, the now impartial transport minister, helped negotiate the visitors mild authorities’s coalition settlement. At that point, each Wissing’s former social gathering, the FDP, and a few Greens flirted with the thought of ​​splitting up Deutsche Bahn.

Two separate corporations needs to be answerable for the rail community on the one hand and the operation of the trains on the opposite. The concept is that this may lastly create extra competitors on the railways, and since competitors stimulates enterprise, a greater railway system would emerge.

This concept is at present gaining momentum once more. The Union’s election program for the federal election, which has simply been offered, states: “In order to increase competition, the infrastructure and transport sectors must be separated from each other more closely than before.”

The FDP will most likely additionally include comparable calls for in its election program. But after three years as transport minister, ex-FDP member Wissing now not sees any level in splitting up the railway.

“The dismantling of the railway has zero effect on the punctuality of the trains,” stated Wissing on December seventeenth. “We don’t have a corporate law problem at the railway, our transformers are burning out.” In phrases of regulatory coverage, it makes good sense to consider such a separation of operations and the community, however there are rather more necessary issues in the intervening time.

Wissing is anxious that the at present deliberate basic renovations of notably busy routes can’t be continued or might be considerably delayed. The railway has proven that the idea works.

Deutsche Bahn is wanting cash

At the weekend, the so-called Riedbahn between Mannheim and Frankfurt was put again into operation after 5 months of closure. A complete of 40 extra corridors are to be renovated, with the Hamburg-Berlin route coming subsequent in 2025. But financing for all basic renovations has not but been secured.

There can also be a short-term lack of cash. 700 million euros for building value subsidies, which had been truly alleged to be paid out in 2025, had been blocked by the Bundestag’s finances committee.

They are additionally unlikely to be launched on this legislative interval. This unsettles the development trade, which doesn’t improve its capacities as a result of unclear state of affairs, which in flip results in increased prices, warns Wissing.

“It is important that the budget legislator now clears the way for financing this concept,” says the minister. “Any form of blockage in the budget, any form of delay in the release of funds leads to considerable additional effort and uncertainty for the railway, but also for the construction industry.”

Philipp Vetter is a enterprise correspondent in Berlin. He reviews about it Federal Ministry of Economics, Economic coverage, Energy coverage, Transport coverage, mobility and the German railway. You can subscribe to his unique WELTplus e-newsletter subscribe right here. He has been co-host of the WELT podcast since 2021.Everything on shares“.