A TRAIN AT TWO SPEEDS

The recent announcement about a possible design for a high speed eurotrain has meant to speak, another time, about the theme of the "Europe at two speeds". If we recapitulate briefly, the genesis of this railway project, it will be into the recent announcement made by the French enterprise SNCF's president, Louis Gallois and, by the German Deutsche Bahn's president, Hartmut Mehdorn, about the construction of a possible high speed train "European". Strange euphemism, if we consider that, except of, that contributed by Japan, all the high speed will be European... Perhaps it would have been clearer, although fewer political, than to speak about the consolidation of the market supremacy for some German and French enterprises.

The first consequence of this agreement would be "to work in the elaboration of both specifications for the European train at high speed". Got carried away by the patriotic enthusiasm, and forgetting, it seems that, the old idea of the European wide, the two presidents have just emphasized in the new train, of fourth generation, it would be made joining the TGV's tecnologies belonging to the French enterprise Alstom and those ones belonging to the German ICE, developed by the German enterprise Siemens. Of course, SNCF's president -as has published the French newspaper Le Monde- has stated that "the other European railways and industrialists: Spanish, Italian, Swiss, Belgian, Dutch, would become partners to the project".

Although it is new in the railway world, but the idea it isn't, because it is being repeated that made with Airbus and other projects. It seems clear that who is in charge is who is, and the other part, as much, will be to carry the train of the bridegroom... and enoughly. By the way, the announcement of the project was done during a meeting in Strasbourg between the two presidents last 16th and 17th of December. The European press, as we have given before the example published into the newspaper Le Monde where were included the most important aspects in that agreement -which are given into a report published in STOL (Spanish Trains On Line) this month-, becuase of noenterprise can adduce that they don't know it. How has noreaction been to this small "high speed imperialism"? What does the Spanish enterprise Talgo say in relation to this theme? And the Italian industrialists, what do they say? Even, what does the German-Northamerican ADtranz, which, it seems that it has been banished to a second position, say? If it has just been decided that the only eurotrain will be a French-German train, what will the crumbs which would fall over the table be? We are waiting for the answers.