France and Russia hope to step up bilateral cooperation in the railway sector, the heads of the countries’ national railway companies said at a bilateral cooperation event in Paris last month.
Vladimir Yakunin, CEO of Russian Railways (RZD), and his counterpart Guillaume Pépy of France’s SNCF were at a high-level seminar on the creation of a unified Eurasian rail transport system organized by the French-Russian Dialogue, an association promoting bilateral economic and cultural relations. The event, which took place on December 2 in Paris, saw the two CEOs sign an official agreement on international train service cooperation in Berlin, Moscow and Paris, which took effect on December 13, 2011.
“Transportation is key to our bilateral relations. France and Russia share the objective of developing high-speed line projects,” said French Transport Minister Thierry Mariani, who attended the seminar along with Sergey Ivanov, former Russian deputy prime minister and current chief-of-staff to President Dmitry Medvedev.
Mariani also noted that French Prime Minister Fillon had previously signed a declaration of intent in support of such joint projects during a visit to Moscow on November 18 for a meeting of the Russian-French commission on bilateral cooperation. Mariani further expressed hope that French companies would continue to play an active role in the development of Russia’s transport infrastructure by participating in large projects such as the Moscow-St. Petersburg high-speed rail line or major international events hosted in the Russian Federation, like the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.
Russia’s Deputy Transport Minister Andrey Nedosekov stressed that many projects currently being developed in cooperation with France focus on the security and protection of passengers, a priority for the Russian government which has already allocated €1 billion to the cause.
France is currently Russia’s second largest European trade partner behind Germany. Bilateral trade increased 37.4 percent over the first nine months of 2011 and is expected to have peaked at €23.5 billion by year’s end.
Russia intends to invest €3000 billion in the modernization and further development of its rail network over the next 30 years, with the stated goal of establishing one of the world’s largest rail transportation systems.
The conference was also the occasion for France to reaffirm its engagement in the development of the Russian rail network, with the signing of a “railway stations twinning program” between RZD and SNCF. Pointing out that the meeting fell on the one year anniversary of the inauguration of the Moscow-Nice train line, the longest trans-European train route, SNCF’s Pépy invited his Russian counterpart to draw up a joint working program on the development of integrated transport systems for the metropolitan areas of Moscow and Paris, known in France as the “Greater Paris” project.
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