Paris (AFP)

Transport Minister Elisabeth Borne promised on Wednesday "corrective" maintenance problems at the SNCF, reported in a report of the railway gendarme, the CGT considered his "major" responsibility of the state and management.

"We will all be vigilant that corrective measures are made in the short and medium term," assured the Minister of Transport on RTL about the problems identified by the Public Railway Safety Establishment (EPSF) and published Tuesday by Le Parisien .

"The EPSF is in its role to report deficiencies," said Ms. Borne. "If there was an immediate safety problem, the EPSF could decide to immediately stop equipment and traffic, and it did not do so."

According to Le Parisien, maintenance problems, such as those that led to accidents such as the fatal derailment of Brétigny in 2013, "persist" at the SNCF. The newspaper relies on a partial and confidential report of the EPSF, covering the technical audit of 14,000 km of the SNCF network (which has nearly 30,000 in total).

Ms. Borne sees the consequences of "decades of under-investment and + all-TGV +", and recalled that the government had committed a year ago to bring the modernization of railways to 3.6 billions of euros a year, "50% more than what was done in the last decade".

"All this work must be done, which is a real challenge for the SNCF," she insisted.

Asked by AFP, SNCF management said that "to judge the state of safety, we must look at the number of + remarkable safety accidents + reported by the EPSF, which has decreased by 30% in three years ". Since Bretigny, "control and security have been completely overhauled," they added.

For the CGT-Cheminots, "the responsibility of the State and the management of the SNCF is major". The situation of the rail network results "from the choices made by the successive governments and the management", with "the unbridled search" for "a decrease of the costs and the breakage of the public tool which is the SNCF", accuses in a communicated the first syndicate of the SNCF.

Denouncing a "massive recourse to subcontracting" and the reduction "of the number of railway workers", the CGT-Cheminots calls for "human, material and financial means" to "maintain a high level of safety on railway infrastructures".

The Unsa Railway, SNCF's second union, called for a "sustainable financing and modernization of the rail network" on the eve of a final vote by the LOM. (law on mobility, ed), the 2020 finance bill and even more the new performance contract with SNCF Réseau ".

© 2019 AFP