Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur: Renaud Muselier denounces "inadmissible blackmail (…)

Refusal by the SNCF of regional investments for the improvement of TER

Renaud Muselier, President of Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur, MEP, denounces in a statement " the inadmissible blackmail of the SNCF "

Renaud Muselier, President of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Region (Photo by Robert Poulain)

While the Region wishes to improve the highly degraded quality of the TER services provided by SNCF and to have justifications on the amounts invoiced for this service, the SNCF comes to report its refusal to comply with the Region's investment requests. In a letter addressed to the Minister of Transport Elizabeth Borne, Renaud Muselier claims " a strong intervention of the State " and denounces " blackmail undertaken at the expense of users ". Despite the dispute with SNCF, the Region stresses that it has never stopped investing in improving the service provided to users. It has thus decided to acquire, for 170 M €, 16 new REGIO2N and Régiolis trains. Purchases of rolling stock, although financed entirely by the Region, go through a national framework contract of which the SNCF is the sole holder. However, adds Renaud Muselier, " SNCF informed the Region that it would not respond to this request because of the current litigation. For the same reasons, the SNCF put an end to the deployment of the safety gates in the stations and it hinted that it would not renew the conventions of the mediation badociations in the railway stations and TER. ". " Does the SNCF really think it will remain a player in regional public transport by punishing the Region, its inhabitants and its own agents? This showdown is obviously unacceptable. These maneuvers of the SNCF are only intended to exert inadmissible blackmail on regional elected officials and compromise the forthcoming opening of the TER of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur the President of the Region who declares: " Solemnly, Madam Minister, I ask you to bring the SNCF to reason and to withdraw these decisions which take hostage the safety and the comfort of the users, just like agents SNCF of Provence-Alpes -Côte d'Azur. We will not give up anything and will not accept this blackmail because we have full confidence in the administrative justice of our country to say the law and settle the dispute that opposes us without having to resort to anti-democratic procedures. I appeal today to your authority so that the SNCF renounces definitively its reprisals in the sense of the general interest which should be the only guide of the action of a large public company like the SNCF "