The Railway Safety Agency, in Spanish, Agencia Estatal de Seguridad Ferroviaria is a Spanish government agency within the Department of Transport. The AESF is the highest railway authority and responsible for the railway safety. It carries out safety management and supervision of all elements of the railway system: infrastructures, rolling stock, railway personnel and railway operation. The agency is responsible for granting, suspending and revoking the licenses of railway companies.
Functions
As the responsible authority of the railway safety, the AESF is responsible for:
Ensure security on state railroads.
Monitor the functioning of the systems and check that they meet the requirements.
Authorize the commissioning of railway vehicles.
Issue, renew, modify or revoke the safety certificates of railway companies and monitor them at a later date.
Issue, renew, modify or revoke the security authorizations of infrastructure managers, as well as supervise them later.
Propose and develop the safety regulatory framework and monitor its compliance by railway system actors, as well as formulate proposals, guidelines and policy recommendations, including the technical specifications of the railway subsystems.
To exercise the powers that correspond to the Ministry of Public Works in relation to the defense of the public railway domain and with the modification of the limit line of the building, without prejudice to the competences that correspond to the administrator of railway infrastructures.
Exercise the sanctioning power in matters of railway safety.
Organization
The agency is structured into three main governing bodies as follows:
Presidency with Direction, a subdirection of railway coordination and Subdirection of infrastructures and a Division of administration.
Governing council.
Control commission.
Presidency
The President is the institutional representative of the agency and its Governing Council. The President of the Agency is the head of the Secretary-General for Infrastructure. The President, since 23 March 2019 Julián López Milla.
The Director is the executive officer of the Agency and responsible for its ordinary management. The director is appointed by the Governing Council. The director of the agency is Pedro M. Lekuona García, since 2017. The first directo of the agency was Carlos Díez Arroyo, who served from 2015 to 2017.
Budget
The 2020 budget was 13.88 million per the Secretary of State for Budgets and Expenditures.
