UIC, as the worldwide organisation for the promotion of rail transport at a global level and collaborative development of the railway system, maintains close cooperation links with all actors in the rail transport domain around the world, including manufacturers, railway associations, public authorities and stakeholders in other domains and sectors whose experiences may be beneficial to rail development.

UIC’s main tasks include understanding the business needs of the rail community, developing programmes of innovation to identify solutions to those needs and preparing and publishing a series of documents known as IRS that facilitate the implementation of the innovative solutions.

In this special edition of UIC eNews, UIC, as a Standardisation Setting Organisation (SSO), is pleased to focus on the issue of Standardisation, and more particularly on UIC IRSs (International Railway Solution).

Contributing to economic development and innovation, standardisation is an essential tool in terms of industrial strategy, since it determines the rules of the economic game and allows a sector to take benefits from competitive advantages in a context of global competition. Targeted action on standardisation is also a means of greatly increasing the economic impact of an innovation or an industrial property right. In this respect, standardisation is also an essential element of innovation policy.

UIC has always fully appreciated the strategic stakes of standardisation.

And it is crucial that UIC members continue to work actively on the development of the IRS in relation to these issues.

The UIC eNews team hopes you enjoy reading this special edition!