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Competition: the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania held that the decision on the allocation of public railway infrastructure capacity had been adopted in breach of Directive 2012/34/EU provisions on the independence of the essential functions of the infrastructure manager.

The case concerned a decision of the Lithuanian Transport Safety Administration refusing to allocate to the applicant, UAB Gargždų geležinkelis, the requested public railway infrastructure capacity for the 2017–2018 working timetable.

In its appeal, UAB Gargždų geležinkelis argued that the court of first instance had failed to take into account the applicant’s submissions relating to the transposition of Directive 2012/34/EU into national law and had not assessed the interpretations provided by the Court of Justice of the European Union relied upon by the appellant. As a result, an unfounded decision had been adopted. The applicant contended that, when adopting the contested decision on the allocation of public railway infrastructure capacity, the functions performed by the Lithuanian Railways Infrastructure Directorate of AB Lietuvos geležinkeliai (the Directorate) were analogous to those which Article 7 of Directive 2012/34/EU prohibits being carried out by an entity that does not meet the independence requirements.

Having regard to the interpretations provided in the judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania held that the preparation of train timetables and the coordination of applications constituted functions referred to in Section 3 of Chapter IV of Directive 2012/34/EU. Pursuant to Article 7(2) of that Directive, where the infrastructure manager is legally dependent on a railway undertaking, those functions must be carried out by an allocation body which is independent of any railway undertaking in its legal form, organisation and decision-making. In the present case, however, those functions had been performed by the Directorate, which was a structural unit of AB Lietuvos geležinkeliai and did not meet the criterion of legal independence. Accordingly, it was found that, in the present case, the procedure for adopting the contested decision — during which the Directorate prepared the draft working timetable and coordinated applications for the same infrastructure capacity — had been carried out in breach of Article 7 of Directive 2012/34/EU.

Taking into account the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, according to which a national court is required to apply EU law in its entirety and to protect the rights conferred on individuals by that law — in certain circumstances by disapplying provisions of national law where their application would lead to a result incompatible with EU law — and having regard to the fact that the contested decision had been adopted in breach of Directive 2012/34/EU, the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania annulled the contested decision.

Administrative case No eA-27-822/2025