PSI - Issue 62

Erika Garusi et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 62 (2024) 233–240 E. Garusi et al./ Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2019) 000 – 000

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1. Introduction The transport sector, including transport over land, water and air, is essential to Europe’s prosperity: not only does this sector facilitate the mobility of citizens and goods; it also has a significant impact on economic growth, social development and the environment. This sector is regulated in the European Union, National and international Law. UE’s transport competences date back to Treaty of Rome (1957), but EU only started legislating in the 1990s. In the previous period, transport policies were mainly within the competences of Member States, and their evolution followed national priorities. Almost all European infrastructure has been in operation for many years and the costs associated with its maintenance represent a high percentage of the construction cost. Added to the maintenance costs are the costs in terms of reduction in service levels due to closing times linked to inspection and maintenance work. Furthermore, over the last 30 years, the rate of deterioration of road infrastructure has increased due to the diversification of the traffic spectrum, the increase in vehicle volume and the effects of climate change (Bencivenga et al., 2022; Grimaz et al., 2024). Since 2001, the EU adopted four legislative railway “packages”, aimed at gradually opening rail markets and improving rail system by developing common technical and safety standards throughout the EU, also by establishing a European Railway Agency (ERA). In road and highway transport, on the other hand, EU has not regulated all the function of infrastructure managers developing common technical and safety standards, except for tunnels in the Trans-European Road Network and on road newtwork safety ranking. In Italy, only after the collapse of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa (2018), the Government with Decree Law 109/2018 established the National Safety Agency for Safety of Railway and Road infrastructures (ANSFISA) which the role of promoting safety and supervising also roads and highways. The work shows the difference between the supervisory activities of the Agency and the detailed verification activity carried out by the road operators, since it was established until now. In particular, the paper focuses on one of the activities in the annual ANSFISA plan: the supervision inspection on site. After comparing the results of ANSFISA ordinary activities with the extraordinary activities imposed by the italian government, the research highlight the need for an organic legal intervention to reorganize roles in the transport sector, hypothesizing the transformation of the current Agency into the new independent administrative authority for safety of land transport. 2. EU’s transport competence The EU's competence in the transport sector is enshrined in Article 4 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and is regulated in detail in Title VI of the TFEU, entirely dedicated to “transport”. The EU's competence also includes “transport infrastructures”. Among transport infrastructures, “Trans -European transport networks” (TEN -T) play a fundamental role, to the point of having autonomous regulation within the TFEU. Although the EU has been responsible for transport since 1957, only in 1990s started to legislate, creating the political, institutional and budgetary foundations for such a transport policy. 2.1. Railway European and italian transport sector Since 2001, the EU adopted consecutive legislative railway “packages”, aimed at gradually opening rail markets and making national railway systems interoperable across the EU and established with Regulation EC No 881/2004, repealed by Regulation EU 2016/796, the European Railway Agency (ERA). ERA was estabilished to improve the EU rail system by developing common technical and safety standards. In early 2013, the European Commission proposed a fourth “ railway package ”, consisting of 6 European legislative texts, pertaining to two distinct “pillars”. The “technical pillar” was adopted by the European Parliament and the Council in April 2016, while the “ market pillar ” , was adopted in December of the same year. Italy established with Legislative Decree No 162/2007 the National Agency for Railway Safety (ANSF), which on 30 November 2020 merged into the ANSFISA mentioned above, and implemented both “technical pillar ” with Legislative Decree No 50/2019 and the “market pillar ” with Legislative Decree No 57/2019.