New Trends in European Rail Freight Transport

The dissertation has focused its attention on rail freight transport in the EU where it tried to identify trends that have accompanied that transport in the last decades. The identified trends are: intermodality, interoperability, creation of railway corridors and harmonization of legal norms for transport of goods. Each trend has been judged from the perspective of the so-called "common transport policy". The complexity of the analyzed environment as well as the interest in the depiction of the situation in the Czech Republic have led to the setting of three goals and three scientific questions. The result of the author's scientific investigation is a completely original work that should contribute to better understanding of changes of structural-systemic nature that happen in the rail cargo transport in the territory of the EU. Such a work is also an evaluating mirror for the reform of the railway sector undertaken by the same institution