OREANDA-NEWS. July 05, 2013. Vladimir Yakunin, President of Russian Railways and Chairman of the International Union of Railways (UIC), has opened the 82nd session of the UIC's General Assembly. Yakunin also presented the UIC's programme at the session, which began in the French capital Paris.

Yakunin said that the UIC's further development would be based on three most important qualities: unity, solidarity and universality.

"Every organisation, every company that has joined the UIC, is part of a larger organism. And in order for the system to work effectively, each part of it should be involved in UIC activities. To ensure effective teamwork, our cooperation should be coordinated and aimed at overcoming national and regional boundaries," said Yakunin

Yakunin also outlined the UIC's main directions for the future. The most important goal was to increase the UIC's participation in shaping global transport policy. A separate area should be the development of cooperation with UN agencies to manage the development of rail transport and freight and passenger transport and border crossing procedures, as well as cooperation with UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) in order to develop rail transport and logistics.

Another focus should be legal harmonisation by developing common approaches and methods to the establish a harmonised model transport law applicable on a global scale. This would involve the unification of norms and standards in the field of railway engineering, infrastructure and technology. Such legal harmonisation involves a number of players: shippers, railway companies and the state as a whole, since the development of rail freight facilitates the realisation of foreign trade and transit potential and produces a wide range of multiplicative effects as transport and trade develop.

Vladimir Yakunin also focused special attention on that part of the programme dealing with cooperation in the field of security and safety, as well as on sustainable development. In fact, work is already underway on analysing and collating statistical data on resource conservation and energy efficiency in different regions and on developing a common strategic programme for sustainable development which takes into account economic, social and environmental factors.