Who we are

Rail Freight Corridor Amber was a cooperation of the five railway Infrastructure Managers SŽ-I (Slovenia), GYSEV and MÁV (Hungary), ŽSR (Slovakia) and PLK (Poland) and the Hungarian Rail Capacity Allocation Office VPE. These six partners were jointly managing and developing the Rail Freight Corridor in line with EU-Regulation 913/2010 concerning a European rail network for competitive freight and Commission Implementing Decision 2017/177 with a view on meeting growing customer expectations and improving the conditions for efficient, competitive, sustainable and reliable rail freight.

The eponym of our corridor is the legendary Amber Road, an important ancient trade route, whose alignment the corridor broadly follows and which it revives in form of a modern Rail Freight Corridor, adapted to the needs of modern transport and advanced logistics. With their cooperation the RFC Amber Members aimed at unlocking the growth potential in long-distance freight traffic, promoting rail’s key role in a sustainable European transport system and contributing to the prosperity of the countries and regions which the corridor serves.

In the scope of the responsibilities and tasks of the corridor governance was a wide range of activities, including the provision of information about the conditions of use of the corridor, capacity planning and allocation, coordination across borders of traffic management – even in case of disturbances – and Temporary Capacity Restrictions, the promotion of interoperability, development of the exchange with customers and terminals and monitoring of the traffic development on the corridor. The corridor was also dealing with international contingency management in case of major disruptions and with promotional activities.

RFC Amber was a beneficiary of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) - Programme Support Action (PSA) on the basis of the Multi-annual Work Programme 2014-2020, entitled "Establishment and development of the Amber rail freight corridor", action number 2016-PSA-RFC11. 

The Action was a Programme Support Action (PSA) in the meaning of Article 2(7) and 7(2)(j) of the CEF Regulation (EU) n°1316/2013 establishing the Connecting Europe Facility and contributes to the preparation of the following pre-identified project on the core network: Rail Freight Corridors (RFCs) established and developed in line with Regulation (EU) No 913/2010 forming the rail freight backbone of the TEN-T Core Network Corridors.

The available co-funding within the frame of the PSA was EUR 1 090 909. Originally the Beneficiaries should have implemented the Action until the end of 2020 but due to the pandemic crisis certain activities need further time to get realized, thus, an extension was granted by the Innovation and Network Executive Agency (INEA) until 30 September 2021.

RFC Amber was also a beneficiary of the Technical Assistance (TA) of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) under the project name “Promoting an effective implementation of Regulation (EU) 913/2010 by Rail Freight Corridor Amber”, project acronym CEF-TA-AMBER. The Project Management activity was undertaken by GYSEV, as the Coordinator mandated by the Management Board for the conclusion and management of the Grant Agreement. The consortium consists of six cooperating Parties (Beneficiaries), which are the Members of the corridor. The action runs from 1 October 2021 until 31 December 2024.

In the Grant Agreement of TA a list of deliverables was laid down, forming the basis for the EU-funding. The available funding was EUR 461 280, granted by the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency  (CINEA). Most of the Deliverables had to be produced annually while some of them (e.g. the Transport Market Study) was elaborated once during the whole duration of the action, until the end of 2024.