Rail sector

Our rail sector competence team advises on all matters relating to this sector – including transport and forwarding contracts, authorisations, purchases and leases of railway vehicles, maintenance contracts, railway accidents, and sector-specific employment law issues. We also advise our clients in the areas of procurement, regulation and supervision. This includes tenders, appeals and applications for exemptions, as well as licences and administrative measures.

Our clients also rely on our expertise regarding cooperating with competitors and corporate transactions, including antitrust issues. Our services in this field include representing our clients in market abuse proceedings or merger control and notification procedures and advising them on compliance and sales cartel law issues.

We regularly represent our clients in proceedings before the German courts, or before the General Court or the Court of Justice of the EU, regarding specific issues arising out of rail transport.

Our team has specialised, cross-jurisdictional expertise and a deep understanding of rail transport and its technical principles. It knows the sector and has been assisting its players during the privatisation of Europe’s railways for more than twenty years. We regularly contribute articles to leading specialist journals on current legal topics that affect the sector.

We can assist you in these areas:

• 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