Article 7

Principles of charging 1. Charges for the use of railway infrastructure shall be paid to the infrastructure manager and used to fund his business. 2. Member States may require the infrastructure manager to provide all necessary information on the charges imposed. The infrastructure manager must, in this regard, be able to justify that infrastructure charges actually invoiced to each operator, pursuant to Articles 4 to 12, comply with the methodology, rules, and where applicable, scales laid down in the network statement. 3. Without prejudice to paragraphs 4 or 5 or to Article 8, the charges for the minimum access package and track access to service facilities shall be set at the cost that is directly incurred as a result of operating the train service. 4. The infrastructure charge may include a charge which reflects the scarcity of capacity of the identifiable segment of the infrastructure during periods of congestion. 5. The infrastructure charge may be modified to take account of the cost of the environmental effects caused by the operation of the train. Such a modification shall be differentiated according to the magnitude of the effect caused. Charging of environmental costs which results in an increase in the overall revenue accruing to the infrastructure manager shall however be allowed only if such charging is applied at a comparable level to competing modes of transport. In the absence of any comparable level of charging of environmental costs in other competing modes of transport, such modification shall not result in any overall change in revenue to the infrastructure manager. If a comparable level of charging of environmental costs has been introduced for rail and competing modes of transport and that generates additional revenue, it shall be for Member States to decide how the revenue shall be used. 6. To avoid undesirable disproportionate fluctuations, the charges referred to in paragraphs 3, 4 and 5 may be averaged over a reasonable spread of train services and times. Nevertheless, the relative magnitudes of the infrastructure charges shall be related to the costs attributable to the services. 7. The supply of services referred to in Annex II, point 2, shall not be covered by this Article. Without prejudice to the foregoing, account shall be taken, in setting the prices for the services set out in Annex II, point 2, of the competitive situation of rail transport. 8. Where services listed in Annex II, points 3 and 4 as additional and ancillary services are offered only by one supplier the charge imposed for such a service shall relate to the cost of providing it, calculated on the basis of the actual level of use. 9. Charges may be levied for capacity used for the purpose of infrastructure maintenance. Such charges shall not exceed the net revenue loss to the infrastructure manager caused by the maintenance.

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-10-29 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.