In this time of crisis, everyone knows that there will be no renewed
productivity growth without a major European investment plan. Everyone knows
also that there will be no revival of the construction of Europe without a
revival of the joint projects between Germany and France. It is indeed from
there that all the big European projects were released: the euro, the European
defence, the free movement of people began with the fixation of a parity
between the French Franc and the Deutsche Mark, with the creation of a Franco-German
brigade and the Schengen agreement.
Since the beginning of Jacques Chirac first mandate, no major project has
come to nourish the imagination and the French-German reality, and therefore
that of Europe. It is therefore urgent to imagine a new one. It could be in
the field of education, culture, health, environment; it should in all cases
be structuring and be able to extend then to other country members of the
European Union. In my opinion, shared by others, the best project, today,
would be to organize the merger between the two railway companies: SNCF and
its German counterpart, Bundesbahn.
Even if they are engaged at the moment in a wild battle on all levels, as
showed very recently by the restructuring of Eurostar’s capital (where the
French public company just acquired the majority), these two companies are
very complementary: SNCF is better on passengers; Bundesbahn on freight;
SNCF is better established in Western Europe; Deutsche Bahn looks to the
East and is investing in a Trans-Siberian line. One is not public; the other
is in the process of privatization. One is the place of fussy social
conflicts; the other has a calmer social climate. One has the TGV and the
Eurostar; the other has the ICE and the AGV, which will carry twice the
number of passengers.
Let us not say that such a merger is impossible: the exceptional success of
Eurostar, which will even be soon profitable is the proof that it is
possible.
It will make it possible to maintain the quality of public service on
railways, in the most remote corners, the essential condition for land-use
planning. It will also make it possible to improve the movement of people
and goods, to reduce the production of greenhouse gases, without damaging
competition, thanks to the arrival of the other carriers on the same
railroad networks soon, and that of transport by private buses; it will also
allow the modernization of the status of the staff. It would finally make it
possible to design the status of a Franco-German public company (without
following the Byzantine model of EADS, where everything is made so that
nobody decides); before coming one day, the sooner the better, to the status
of a European public company (Which would also be necessary to avoid a
return of protectionism, in particular within the financial system,
threatened by nationalizations involving banks retreating on to their national
territory).
Finally, it would be, with more than 65 years of delay, the best answer to
History, which had allowed French trains, belonging to SNCF and just
created, led by French railroad employees, to take people from all over
France, Bordeaux or Marseilles, to Drancy, Beaune la Rolande and Pithiviers,
then to Auschwitz, in Poland, while crossing Germany.