Definitions
Article 5
For the purposes of this Regulation, the definitions provided for in Article 3 of Directive 2012/34/EU apply. The following definitions also apply: (1) ‘ force majeure ’ means any unforeseeable, unavoidable or exceptional event or situation beyond the control of the operational stakeholder which cannot be overcome with reasonable foresight and diligence, cannot be solved by measures which are, from a technical, financial or economic point of view, reasonably possible for the operational stakeholder, which has actually happened and is objectively verifiable and which makes it impossible for the operational stakeholder to fulfil, temporarily or permanently, its obligations in accordance with this Regulation, Directive 2012/34/EU or its contractual obligations; (2) ‘interoperability’ means interoperability as defined in Article 2, point (2), of Directive (EU) 2016/797 of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 14 ) ; (3) ‘operational stakeholder’ means an applicant, railway undertaking, infrastructure manager, competent authority as referred to in Regulation (EC) No 1370/2007 of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 15 ) , operator of service facilities or any other entity directly involved in operating a rail transport service; (4) ‘European Coordinator’ means the Coordinator designated under Article 52 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1679 of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 16 ) ; (5) ‘European Transport Corridors’ means the corridors referred to in Articles 7 and 11 of, and Annex III to, Regulation (EU) 2024/1679; (6) ‘framework agreement’ means a legally binding general agreement under public or private law setting out the rights and obligations of an applicant and the infrastructure manager in relation to the railway infrastructure capacity to be allocated and the charges to be levied over a period longer than one working timetable period; (7) ‘simultaneous capacity allocation’ means a process whereby infrastructure managers allocate railway infrastructure capacity in response to a set of requests for capacity received by a given cut-off date and through coordination of these requests to ensure the best possible utilisation of the railway infrastructure and the closest possible match with the requests; (8) ‘first come, first served principle’ means a principle for the allocation of railway infrastructure capacity where priority in the allocation process is given according to the chronological order of the capacity requests; (9) ‘train path’ means the railway infrastructure capacity needed to run a train between two places over a given period, which is described as an exact route with timing for that train, including the origin and destination, an entry time and day and an exit time and day, including any stopping point and related departure times; (10) ‘capacity specification’ means a capacity right which specifies the commercial and operational characteristics of the railway infrastructure capacity relevant for the applicant concerned and which provides the infrastructure manager with enough information to prepare specific train paths that respect those characteristics; (11) ‘multi-network rail service’ means a rail transport service, freight or passenger, domestic or international, which is operated on two or more networks managed by different infrastructure managers; the train can be joined and/or split and the different sections cany have different origins and destinations; (12) ‘multi-network capacity right’ means the entirety of capacity rights enabling the provision of a multi-network rail service; (13) ‘partitioning of railway infrastructure capacity’ means assigning shares of the total available capacity of an element of railway infrastructure to different types of rail transport services and to capacity restrictions resulting from railway infrastructure work; (14) ‘working timetable’ means the continuously updated data defining all planned train and rolling-stock movements which will take place on the relevant railway infrastructure, as expressed by allocated capacity rights, during a working timetable period; (15) ‘working timetable period’ means the period of time during which a given working timetable is valid; (16) ‘railway infrastructure work’ means an intervention on the railway infrastructure for the purpose of development, maintenance, renewal or upgrade of the railway infrastructure as defined in Article 3, points (2a), (2c), (2d) and (2e), respectively, of Directive 2012/34/EU; (17) ‘regulatory body’ means the regulatory body referred to in Article 55 of Directive 2012/34/EU; (18) ‘incident’ means any occurrence, or series of occurrences having the same origin, which causes disruption of rail traffic; (19) ‘sections and nodes’ means a representation of the railway network in the form of a graph composed of nodes connected by sections which is structured in a way that allows relevant characteristics of the supply of, and demand for, railway infrastructure capacity to be taken into account, in particular for the purpose of strategic capacity planning; (20) ‘specific timetable design’ means a particular way of arranging the train paths in a timetable, including for multi-network traffic, with a view to pursuing particular policy objectives; (21) ‘exceptional transport’ means exceptional transport as defined in Appendix J of Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/773 ( 17 ) ; (22) ‘clock-face timetable’ means a specific timetable design aimed at replicating rail services at regular and consistent intervals and at combining paths on the sections and nodes of a network, or part of a network, taking into account, where relevant, the connections and transfer times between services; (23) ‘element of railway infrastructure’ means a portion of tracks of the network that is identified by the infrastructure manager for the purpose of application of specific provisions in this Regulation; (24) ‘capacity restriction’ means a reduction in the capacity, or a reduction in the performance of railway infrastructure below its design values, for reasons within or beyond the control of the infrastructure manager, such as railway infrastructure works, degradation of assets, or extreme weather events.