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THE EUROPEAN COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS

- notes that, with prime responsibility for public transport services on their territories, Local and Regional Authorities (LRAs) are implementing solutions for a more sustainable transport sector, critical in achieving the goal of a sustainable Europe by 2030;

- notes that railways have the potential to become the most critical component of mobility and that rail is the only transport sector whose overall emissions are in decline, despite increasing transport volumes;

- highlights the importance of multimodality for a sustainable EU mobility system and the need for sustained efforts to ensure a level playing field, notably through internalisation of external costs; calls on the European Commission to encourage increased investment in intermodal logistics and rail motorways;

- on digitalisation in the rail sector, recommends faster deployment of ERTMS to better combine additional capacity and safer transport, as well as rapid roll-out of "Digital Freight Trains"; emphasises the potential of integrated ticketing and calls for guidelines at EU level to encourage railways to further open their data, pointing to their relevance for the development of smart cities and the new competences to be developed by LRAs in this area;

- recalls that employment in the rail sector is estimated at between 2.3 and 4 million jobs in the EU; calls for a close partnership between the Commission and the rail sector to address training, recruitment and attractiveness of rail sector professions for young adults;

- notes the special role of stations as vectors of culture; welcomes the success of the #DiscoverEU programme and suggests future joint initiatives in this area; calls on railways to increase their contribution to sustainable tourism;

- emphasises the strategic dimension of public procurement in the rail sector (inclusion of economic, social and environmental improvements in specifications and application of the MEAT (most economically advantageous tender) principle).