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Finmeccanica settles row over faulty Belgian trains

Italian industrial giant Finmeccanica said on Monday it was paying €2.5 million ($3.5 million) to Belgium's national railway to avoid being sued over a now-cancelled order of faulty high-speed trains.

Published: 5 May 2014 16:23 CEST

Finmeccanica settles row over faulty Belgian trains

The Ansaldobreda mechanical manufacturing plant in Naples. Photo: Carlo Hermann/AFP

"The Belgian Railways (NMBS/SNCB), AnsaldoBreda and its controlling company Finmeccanica have settled their discord," Finmeccanica said in a statement.

"The settlement was reached from the advantages both parties see in preventing lengthy legal proceedings."

The Belgian railway company had claimed €27 million from AnsaldoBreda after being forced to cancel its order for 19 high-speed trains — known as the V250 — designed to connect Brussels and Amsterdam.

The link was launched to much fanfare in 2013 but had to be aborted just five months later after serious technical faults in the trains emerged.

Dutch and Belgian railways had ordered a total of 19 trains from AnsaldoBreda for €20 million.

"The agreement will allow AnsaldoBreda to exploit the possibility of selling trains to other customers and with some customizations make them fit for other requirements and needs of such customers.

"As part of the agreement both parties will refrain from making financial claims, including supposed damages on both sides," Finmeccanica said.

Finmeccanica earlier settled with the Dutch railway.

READ MORE: Dutch agree to return Italian high-speed trains

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Swedish government shelves plans for two fast train links

In an announcement slipped out just before Christmas Eve, the government said it had instructed the Swedish Transport Administration to stop all planning for the Borås to Gothenburg link, stop the ongoing work on linking Hässleholm and Lund.

“The government wants investments made in the railway system to first and foremost make it easier for commuting and cargo traffic, because that promotes jobs and growth,” infrastructure minister Andreas Carlson said in a press release. “Our approach is for all investments in the railways that are made to be more cost effective than if the original plan for new trunk lines was followed.”

Ulf Olsson, the Social Democrat mayor in Borås, told the TT newswire that the decision was “a catastrophe”.

“We already have Sweden’s slowest railway, so it’s totally unrealistic to try to build on the existing railway,” he said. We are Sweden’s third biggest commuting region and have no functioning rail system, and to release this the day before Christmas Eve is pretty symptomatic.”

Per Tryding, the deputy chief executive for the Southern Sweden Chamber of Commerce, complained that the decision meant Skåne, Sweden’s most southerly county, would now have no major rail infrastructure projects.

“Now the only big investment in Skåne which was in the plan is disappearing, and Skåne already lay far behind Gothenburg and Stockholm,” he said.

“This is going to cause real problems and one thing that is certain that it’s going to take a very long time, whatever they eventually decide. It’s extremely strange to want to first suspend everything and then do an analysis instead of doing it the other way around.”

The government’s instructions to the transport agency will also mean that there will be no further planning on the so-called central parts of the new planned trunk lines, between Linköping and Borås and Hässleholm and Jönköping.

Carlson said that the government was prioritising “the existing rail network, better road standards, and a build-out of charging infrastructure”.

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