FTE members voted to elect Philipp Mäder to succeed Stephan Pfuhl as FTE’s new president. Philipp Mäder is in his main function the Head of International Passenger Services at Swiss Federal Railways and brings years of experience in the topics most crucial to FTE member’s businesses.
Several other positions were decided on during the Plenary Assembly, with FTE members voting in Robert Groiss (Metrans, Business Development Manager) and Karol Martinček (ZSSK, Chief Commercial Officer) as new FTE Executive Board members and Richard Herrmann (DB Cargo Deutschland, Head of Single Wagon Service) as a board member and the Head of the FTE Commission for Freight traffic. FTE will publish inteviews with the new members in the upcoming weeks so that the community can get them know better and gain insight into their priorities.
Outside of the elections, several topics relating to FTE business, working areas, and strategic direction were discussed:
- A motion to combine positions among freight and passenger FTE members during the upcoming European law revision
- Possibilities for FTE member's alignment with forthcoming law revision were discussed, highlighting the expanding possibilities created by such revision.
- The status of the timetable redesign (TTR) development was on the table, including a resolution for transparent TTR implementation plans per IM.
- New models for membership management were introduced, and decisions were taken to adopt new start-up membership and national RU association membership models. These models will make FTE membership and its benefits more assessable to small start-up railway undertakings and service companies.
The Plenary Assembly was concluded with farewells to exiting board members Stephan Pfuhl and Thorsten Dieter in recognition of their contributions and years of dedicated service. Moreover, a very pleasant dinner was organised by PKP Cargo, which included a speech and welcome from Mr. Kozendra, a member of PKP Cargo's Management Board.