On 17 and 18 April 2024, 20 participants met in-person in the Hamburg DB office while 9 participants joined online. These represented nine East West Tariffs carriers, Czech Railways (CD), the Romanian Railways (CFR), Deutsche Bahn (DB), the Lithuanian Railways (LTG), Hungarian State Railways (MÁV), Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB), Polish State Railways (PKP), Ukrainian Railways (UZ), and the Railway Company of Slovakia (ZSSK), as well as experts from UIC, the Sales Progress Group (SPG), the Accounting Group (RCF1) and the International Rail Transport Committee (CIT), with UZ’s Anton Pylypchuk chairing the two-day meeting.
On the first day, SPG Chair Christian Walkling from DB, informed the audience that understandable and harmonised conditions for ticketing should be implemented across Europe in line with Action 5 of the CER Ticketing Road Map, as well as for EWT tickets, provided that they are part of a single international European journey. He then explained how the mandatory DRTF tariff data upload had been pushed back closer to the annual implementation of the winter train schedule due date in order to increase data quality.
Furthermore, as the Open Sales and Distribution Model (OSDM) online implementation process is ongoing, IRS 10106 is currently being complemented with the relevant regulation. Another update involved SPG workshops taking place with tariff experts to investigate and assess the new business possibilities offered by OSDM.
Next, CIT Expert Jan Vavra detailed the latest updates to PRR 2021 and further legislative EU initiatives, the introduction of the new EU Claim Form for passengers, the current state of affairs for the Agreement on Journey Continuation (AJC), and CIT product amendments.
The Special international conditions of carriage for journeys using East-West-Traffic Tickets (SCIC EWT) have been revised by the working group, with its glossary now containing the correct definitions. Nevertheless, some of these will need to be amended after a closer look at the English version of the Railway connections in the International East-West Passenger Traffic (SMPS), with CIT’s remarks during the meeting being taken into account so that they comply with both legal frameworks. The SCIC EWT Master Version 6 will be released on 20 November 2024.
On the second day, David Sarfatti, UIC Senior Advisor for the Passenger Department, and Piotr Machalek, Deputy Director of the IT Department at PKP Intercity, presented the new UIC IT interoperable solutions such as the Multiple East-West Railways Integrated Timetable Storage (MERITS) database, the Flexible Content Barcode (FCB), Universal Rail Ticketing (URT), the electronic Ticket Control Database (eTCD), the Database for Rail Tariffs and Fares (DRTF), OSDM, and the multimodal and Innovation Workshops. Each of these solutions are now available for all UIC members and most are or will be deployed by PKP.
The newly implemented Ukrainian digital e-tickets for EWT connections were presented by CD and UZ representatives.
At the end of the meeting, Karl Winkler, ÖBB representative and former EWT Chair, announced that he would be retiring in the summer. He received presents and warm congratulations for his achievements towards creating a smoother UIC interoperable European distribution system.
All participants agreed to continue to discuss and improve the SCIT-EWT during the next EWT plenary meeting in October 2024.
