Alberto Mazzola has been the Executive Director at CER since January 2021, representing its members towards EU policymakers and advocating rail as the backbone of a competitive and sustainable transport system in Europe.

Alberto Mazzola holds a master’s in business administration and a Doctorate cum Laude in Nuclear Engineering from the Politecnico of Milan. In 2002, he joined Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane (FS), where he held different positions. In his last role as Head of International Government Affairs, he was based in Brussels dealing with international affairs and European legislation, market regulation and technical standards.

A European ERTMS Programme Management

The presentation highlights that synchronised and harmonised trackside and onboard ERTMS deployment is vital to achieve the modal shift targets envisaged in the Green Deal, under the precondition of having suitable funding and financing options in place. Today ERTMS governance is spread along several different bodies (EU ERTMS Coordinator, CINEA, EU Agency for Railways, Europe’s Rail JU), each one responsible for a single component of the value-chain. This generates a clear need for an integrated approach, in order to improve consistency between objectives and fundings. CER believes that ERTMS deployment needs to be boosted and to this purpose a future centralised EU-Level ERTMS governance and Program Management could help with regulating funding, coordination of National Implementation Plans (NIP), resourcing, market uptake, migration, and transition.