There are many EU regulations and directives that apply to the rail industry. Some of these
legal acts are directly addressed to the transport sector and are known as vertical legislation.
Other regulations and directives are addressed to multiple sectors, for example EU
procurement law and are known as horizontal (sometimes called transverse) legislation. The
legislation is created by the EU as a Regulation, Directive, Implementing Act or Delegated Act.
A regulation is a binding legislative act. This means it has to be applied directly from the date
set out in the legislation and in its entirety in all Member States. A regulation does not need to
be transposed into UK law whilst the UK is a member of the EU.
A directive sets out a goal that the Member States must achieve by creating domestic
legislation through a process called transposition. Once the UK has ended its membership of
the EU, the government could repeal or amend the domestic Acts of Parliament which
transpose the directives. This would have to be done on an individual basis in line with
domestic policy change.
Provisions are made within regulations for the European Commission to instigate additional
legislation to flesh-out measures as and when there is more experience as to how the
regulation is working. These are known as delegated and implementing acts. They allow the
Commission to give greater clarity without going through the process of creating a whole new
regulation. Implementing and delegated acts have direct effect which means they apply like
regulations.
It is estimated that there are around 12,000 regulations or directly applicable acts in force now
and around 7,900 statutory instruments have been used by Government to implement
directives.
