On 31 March, the EU Agency for railways (ERA) organised a workshop on developing a positive safety culture in euro-Mediterranean railways in the scope of its EUMedRail project. The event brought together more than 70 participants, from national authorities, railway companies and training institutes from Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia.

The workshop provided an opportunity to exchange on the European railway safety culture model to see how far safety culture can foster continuous improvement and increased performance of the safety management systems, while developing the organizational culture. Debates focused on the practical use of the model to see how to increase risk awareness, how to develop an open and reporting culture, and how to perform return of experience.

Discussions also focused on the importance of safety leadership, and the way individuals act when confronted with competing goals. ERA underlined key principles of safety leadership and promoted recent initiatives of its safety culture programme: guides, trainings, reports, and its pan European safety climate survey) to support railway organisations in capturing staff perception on major railway risks. SNCF completed the discussions with an outline of their safety culture improvement scheme PRISME.

EUMedRail partners were encouraged to apply the safety culture model and to organise national safety culture events to endorse the safety culture declaration (EN/FR), a strong symbolic engagement of railway leaders to promote a positive safety culture through their organisation and beyond.

The purpose of Euromed Transport Rail Project (EUMedRail) is to improve the operations and the efficiency of the Mediterranean transport system by concentrating its efforts on regulatory reforms, training, and dialogue with the decision makers. The main project’s objective is to support the implementation of the Regional Transport Action Plan 2014-2020 actions related to rail transport, by promoting convergence with EU and international standards, facilitating interoperability, and increasing beneficiaries’ participation in the activities of the European Rail Agency.

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European Union Agency for Railways (EUMedRail)