Europorte, subsidiary of Groupe Eurotunnel, is delighted to announce the election of François Coart, its Strategy Director, as President of ERFA, the European Rail Freight Association. At the 10th General Assembly Meeting held today in Brussels, members elected François Coart as their 4th President, succeeding Lord Berkeley, Chairman of RFG and director of ERFA since 2007. François Coart is the Strategy Director of Europorte, one of the largest private rail freight operators. He joined Eurotunnel in 2006 as Director of Development for freight and was then appointed Head of Europorte 2 in 2007, the first private operator to get a railfreight licence in France.
The General Assembly also agreed on ERFA’s strategy for 2011 and beyond. ERFA’s focus will rest on achieving the full legal and technical liberalisation of Europe’s rail freight sector. ERFA will focus more on pro-active solutions in legal, technical and financial areas, such as more cost-efficient and marketable solutions in the fields of safety and interoperability, preserving the industry from predatory pricing behaviour, balanced environmental regulation, a more competition-friendly definition of markets to avoid hostile take-overs and mergers and infrastructure/energy pricing monopolies. ERFA will continue to support its members both on EU and national level with market challenges.
François Coart, President of ERFA, stated:
“The role of ERFA is to bring about a commercially attractive business environment for its members. The breaking of rules governing free competition and open access is illustrated in many ways in Europe. ERFA’s role will be to stop these practices and continue to inject good business culture into the market together with the EU for the benefit of the customers.”
