UIC - Union Internationale des Chemins de fer

UIC is the worldwide organisation for the promotion of rail transport at a global level and collaborative development of the railway system. It brings together some 200 members on all 5 continents, among them rail operators, infrastructure managers, railway service providers, etc. UIC maintains close cooperation links with all actors in the rail transport domain right around the world, including manufacturers, railway associations, public authorities and stakeholders in other domains and sectors whose experiences may be beneficial to rail development. The 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.

Fields of expertise

Engineering, Co-operation, Interoperability et Safety

Contribution of UIC to Sustainable Consumption and production

In 2019 UIC launched a 2-year project called REUSE ( Sustainable Use of Resources in Railways) to take stock of the critical materials, good circularity practices and challenges facing railway infratructure managers in relation to raw materials and their carbon and environmental footprint over their whole life cyle. A final report has been issued at the end ot the project  

Following on this work, UIC has set up in May 2021 the Circular Economy Sector, a group of experts dedicated to circular economy issues. This working group will curate a series of public circular economy best practice workshop to kick off in June 2022. Those workshops are intended to enable railway operators, infra managers and supply industry to meet and exchange on subjects related to circularity in the railways in order to achieve a 100% circular railway system by 2035.