Rail operator says it won’t use legal exclusion to avoid compensation to victims, injured

Hellenic Train, whose passenger train (No. 64) collided with a freight train late Tuesday in north-central Greece just before entering the Tempi Valley Gorge, will reportedly not seek exclusion from compensation towards the victims’ families and those injured.

The rail operator, a subsidiary of Italy’s FS in Greece, posted an announcement on its website stressing that the company “…Ensures full compliance with the applicable European legislation in all necessary actions, so that the relatives of the deceased, the injured and the passengers of train IC 62 of 28.02.2023 are fully satisfied as to their relevant rights pursuant to articles 11 and 13 of EC 1371/2007.”

Speculation emerged in the days after the fatal train collision that Hellenic Train would employ a legal exclusion to avoid compensation, as foreseen in a law passed by the current New Democracy government in 2019.

The official death toll, as of Sunday evening, remained at 57, although the figure is expected rise with the identification of some victims’ remains. Roughly 350 were on the north-bound train that collided with a south-bound freight train at 23.20 (21.20 GMT) on Sunday evening, north of the city of Larissa.

The first indication is that human error was responsible for the collision, although a large stretch of the sole north-south rail axis in the country has no electronic monitoring, communications or signaling systems, despite billions of euros in national and EU resources set aside for the rail networks modernization for decades. Additionally, Greece’s railroads are continuously vandalized by thieves stealing metal cables and other equipment.

The legal exclusion is allowed by an EU regulation, which foresees a specific time period, which in this case was five years, until 2024.

The previous government had also allowed two such five-year exclusions, in 2009 and 2014, from providing monetary compensations to passengers whose rights have been violated.