Trade unionists from across Europe are picketing an EU transport ministers’ meeting in Luxembourg today to oppose the adoption of a “common approach” to privatising railway networks across the continent.

The proposals are contained in the EU’s 4th Railway Package, which was first unveiled over two years ago but has been held up due to division among member states.

To get round this little difficulty, ministers will rubber stamp a so-called “political pillar” of the rail package, which demands independency of infrastructure managers and open access competition for domestic commercial rail passenger services.

The European Transport Federation will hand over a petition to the meeting demanding an end to open access competition and compulsory tendering proposals for rail public passenger services across Europe.

“Don’t make public transport workers and their jobs subject to competition, don’t allow a race to the bottom on working conditions and ensure job security for workers by a compulsory transfer of staff in the case of change of operator.

“We do not want to see the railway sector turned into another opportunity for private actors to make profits,” said ETF deputy general secretary Sabine Trier.

The 4th Railway Package basically outlaws national publicly owned monopolies operating rail services.

If this sounds familiar it’s because in 1992 John Major’s Tory government used the EU’s infamous rail directive 91/440/EC as a blueprint to break up and privatise British Rail.

This approach, known as “unbundling,” has allowed Germany’s Deutsche Bahn (DB), Europe’s largest state-owned operator, and France’s SNCF to massively expand into foreign rail markets but both countries are opposed to having this EU model imposed on themselves.

DB has expanded considerably in the rail freight market with the purchase of the freight section of the Dutch railway company NS (now DB Schenker Rail Nederland), EWS in Britain and DSB goods in Denmark among others.

SNCF has also expanded through acquisitions, raising the spectre of virtual monopolies on rail freight replacing former national monopolies or a potential duopoly between SNCF and DB in most of western Europe.

Germany has long resisted attempts to break up DB, supported by France’s SNCF — the second-biggest operator — which has been separated from the infrastructure provider.

As a result many foreign state-backed companies now run three-quarters of Britain’s rail franchises and use the profits paid for by passengers here to improve services and cut fares in their own countries.

In fact, a German transport ministry spokesperson has openly admitted such a strategy.

“We’re skimming profits from the entire Deutsche Bahn operation and ensuring that it is anchored in our budget — that way we can make sure it is invested in the rail network here in Germany,” he said.

The Dutch state firm Abellio also now operates a network in Britain over two and a half times the size of the one in Netherlands.

In short British railways are being used as a cash-cow to run services across the rest of Europe.

The Commission’s new rail package is also designed to switch investment from a “social railway” to a corporate “single European railway area” with a priority on high-speed and trans-European rail freight to serve Europe’s single market.

Its proposals are remarkably similar to the McNulty 2011 report on the future of our railways.

On page 68 of his report summary McNulty points out there are no legal obstacles with implementation, “provided due attention is given to conformance with EU and public law restrictions, EU directives, particularly with regard to the separation of railway infrastructure and undertakings and EU procurement and state-aid constraints”.

The full report goes on to say that: “EU legislation is unlikely to allow the transfer of assets into a single nationalised public body.”

McNulty, the Tory government and the EU share the business-led mania for “liberalisation” and privatisation and agree on the need to jack up fares and attack jobs, pay and pensions to pay for it.

The 4th Rail Package is a charter for fragmenting national rail systems to ensure permanent private ownership and bumper profits for investors. This neoliberal and anti-democratic approach by EU institutions can be applied to any industry under its thrall whether it is postal services, health, education or any other service working people rely on.

As for the EU — it means corporate profit not social service and they don’t even need a democratic mandate to sell them all off to the highest bidder.

Rather like all corporate power, EU institutions are immune from such democratic pressure because they are designed to be that way.