Strong reaction of GEPOET to the bill for the liberalization of KTEL

By Fotis Fotinos

The General Hellenic Federation of Tourism Enterprises (GEPOET) maintains serious disagreements with the bill for the liberalization of KTEL that the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport put up for public consultation yesterday.

Executives of the tourist bus federation emphasize that the bill, with the provisions and conditions it contains, makes it difficult or even impractical for new schemes, other than KTEL, to participate in tenders for the exploitation of urban and intercity routes.

In particular, GEPOET executives maintain objections to articles of the bill, such as article 7 that refers to the category of buses, but also to article 12 on passenger facilities and stations.

It is noted that in the past, apart from GEPOET, entry into the KTEL market was considered by other road transport federations.

Also, any participation of an international passenger road transport company in the tenders that will be announced, at least on some basic lines, is awaited with interest.

The basic provisions of the bill for the liberalization of KTEL

The “Public long-distance and urban regular road passenger transport” bill, which will be in public consultation until September 10, provides for tenders for the assignment of urban and long-distance KTEL routes.

As argued by the Ministry of Transport, this draft law promotes the replacement of provisions, with a new unified institutional framework adapted to the provisions of European Regulation 1370/2007.

For regular road urban and long-distance passenger transport, the Ministry of Transport is designated as the competent body for carrying out tender procedures by geographic region and awarding contracts, while the monitoring of the execution of contracts will be the responsibility of the Regions of the country in their area of ​​responsibility.

Tenders for the assignment of public regular long-distance and urban passenger road transport are announced as follows:

a. For regional units in which the provision of regular long-distance and urban services is carried out by one transport operator, a single tender is announced for all regular long-distance, intra-regional and inter-regional services, and, if they exist, also urban services, and a contractor is announced for the whole of the project.

b. For regional units in which the provision of regular long-distance services is carried out by one transport operator and the provision of regular urban services is carried out by another transport operator, two tenders are issued, namely, one for the regular long-distance work and another for the regular urban work.

c. Especially for regular urban road passenger transport, a tender is announced for a geographical area that includes urban areas of several municipalities, neighboring or not, of this or other regional units, if this is deemed appropriate for the provision of high-quality services and at the same time for the viability of the contractor, or if the provision of an independent urban transport project in a certain geographical area is deemed unprofitable.

As criteria for determining the geographical area for the provision of an urban transport project, which is the subject of the tender in this case, the estimated kilometers to be carried out, the number of buses required for their execution and the contractor’s gross income, the securing of urban transport services to passengers, the economic viability of businesses and the minimum possible cost of travel.

d. If in the same regional unit the regular long-distance transport project is provided by several transport operators, corresponding awarding tenders are announced.

e. In regions in which regular long-distance intra-regional and inter-regional road passenger transport is provided by a transport operator for more than one regional unit, a single tender is announced and a contractor is announced, for the entire long-distance transport project.

f. On the islands, the assignment of the project, following an open tender process or a direct award process, is carried out on an individual island basis.

If the contractor violates its contractual obligations and the obligations arising from this, as well as from Regulation (EC) 1370/2007, administrative fines are imposed, the amount of which ranges from one thousand (1,000) to ten thousand (10,000) euros .

The administrative fines imposed on the contractors are revenues of the regular budget.