The European Management Committee (EMC) of UIC met in Gdansk on 22 September 2025, kindly hosted by PKP S.A. where they were warmly welcomed by Stefano Donnarumma, Chairman of the UIC Europe Region and CEO of FS Italiane Group, along with UIC Director General François Davenne and UIC Europe Director Sandra Géhénot. A warm welcome was also extended to the new UIC Rail System Department Director Adriano Scapati, seconded from FS Italiane Group.
As the strategic body for the UIC Europe Region, the EMC brings together CEOs to address key issues that require a collective approach to generate business value for the railway sector. The following topics were addressed:
- Standardisation
- FRMCS (Morane 2)
- Resilience
- Regional Governance
Standardisation
Laurent Schmitt, Deputy Chair of the Standardisation Platform, reported on the action plan for standardisation to ensure that UIC’s standardisation work in Europe achieves greater efficiency in line with the objectives of the global strategy adopted in July 2024. It aims at reactivating and strengthening institutional and working links between UIC and CEN-CENELEC for better complementarity, stronger operator representation, clear monitoring processes and guidelines for coordination, and protection of UIC intellectual property.
To this end, a revised cooperation agreement is to be signed in 2026 by the Directors General of CEN-CENELEC and UIC.
FRMCS / Morane2
Jean-Michel Evanghelou, UIC Director Telecom, Signalling and Digital Applications, presented the latest updates regarding the planning for the UIC specification and testing programme. He further informed on reporting principles and on the collaboration with ERA and other key stakeholders. He said the FRMCS V3 planning defined by UIC and ERIG members has been validated by ERA and that a functional EECT session will start at the end of September.
Emphasis was particularly placed on stakeholder alignment to ensure transparency for global deployment.
Regional Governance
UIC Director Europe Sandra Géhénot presented the composition of governance for 2026 – 2027, given that all current mandates will end in December this year.
The process for applications closed at the end of July and proposals for the new period were shown. The nominations for Chair and Vice-Chair have been confirmed with Stefano Donnarumma as Chair and Martin Frobisher as Vice-Chair.
Resilience
UIC Sustainability Director Lucie Anderton briefed the meeting on RERA – resilient railways facing climate change. The RERA Task Force is a new UIC initiative officially launched on 28 March where the project’s objectives and scope were presented to participants from across the sector. She gave an update on the RERA programme, which until now has prioritised two critical hazards: RERA Temp and RERA Rain.
The work will build on the momentum from RERA projects to develop a community of practice and centre of excellence known as the RERA Hub. The concept of this hub received the support of the EMC at its meeting in Wroclaw in April 2025.
Members are working on developing their resilience frameworks with the aim of sharing technical solutions and methodologies as well as collective knowledge as part of this new hub.
The next meeting of the European Regional Assembly will be held on 9 December 2025.
