The French Competition Authority receives commitments from a railway company aiming at increased autonomy of its subsidiary in the market of advice and technical assistance to urban transporters (SNCF, Keolis and Transdev)

The SNCF takes steps towards the increased autonomy of its subsidiary Keolis in the market of advice and technical assistance to urban transporters. The Autorité de la concurrence consults the market on the proposed commitments.

Within the scope of a procedure initiated before the Autorité de la concurrence by Transdev, the SNCF group has proposed a series of commitments designed to strengthen the autonomy of its subsidiary Keolis and not to mobilise the group’s rail resources in tender bids in the markets of advice, technical assistance and support to transport network operators.

The Autorité de la concurrence is launching a market test to check whether these proposed commitments are sufficient to allay the competition concerns that it has identified.

The sector

Communes and local authorities are involved in multiple ways in organising urban transport services (bus, metro, tram, etc.). They can in particular subcontract the provision of these services, by delegation of the public services, to specialist operators such as Keolis, Transdev, RATP Dev or Carpostal. They can also provide them themselves, more or less directly, alone or in groups, in particular via semi-public or public companies. In this case, these "autorités organisatrices de transports urbains/AOTU", or Authorities Organising Urban Transport (local authorities) and their offshoots (semi-public, public companies, etc.) frequently have recourse to external providers of advice, technical assistance and support, to help them in their tasks.

Transdev’s complaint

At the end of 2012, Transdev filed a complaint with the Autorité de la concurrence following the granting of a public tender for technical support for the operation of transport services by the Compagnie des transports strasbourgeois (a semi-public company operating the urban transport network for the Strasbourg city authority). The public contract was awarded to a group made up of two SNCF subsidiaries : Keolis and SNCF Partenariat, which provides its rail expertise to AOTUs and their offshoots.

This tandem’s bid in particular convinced the Strasbourg local authorities with its rail and intermodality proposals.

In its complaint, Transdev accused the SNCF of having abused its dominant position in the national passenger rail transport market, by deliberately maintaining confusion between its activities as a monopoly and its activities in the competitive sector, by mobilising resources that its competitors are not in a position to reproduce, in particular with regard to solutions for intermodality with rail transport.