The International Union of Railways, or the UIC (French: Union Internationale des Chemins de fer), is an international organization that unites national railway companies for the purpose of joint activities aimed at railway transport development.

Objectives of the UIC

The main of objectives of the UIC is to contribute to promotion and development of railway transport throughout the world. Besides, the UIC’s objectives are to:

Facilitate the sharing of best practices of the railway transport industry;

Support members in their efforts to develop new ideas of the railway transport industry;

Contribute to technological progress;

Contribute to railway transport standardization and unification;

Develop centres of competence (Security, e-Business etc.)  

Introduce standard international railway terminology. As a result of this activity a trilingual thesaurus of railway terms was published in 1995.

The Union has also developed standard requirements for containerization and transportation of other cargo types by rail.

The CCTT-UIC cooperation

On 28th March 2012 a redrafted Memorandum of Cooperation between the CCTT and UIC was signed in Paris. The organizations also worked out a Programme of Cooperation for 2012-2015. Both the Memorandum and the Programme were approved at the 80th UIC General Assembly in Philadelphia (9 July 2012). 

• Propose new ways to improve technical and environmental performance
• Promote interoperability, create new world standards for railways (including common standards with other transport modes)
• (High Speed, Safety, Security, e-Business, …)

The CCTT and UIC arrived at an agreement on cooperation in the following areas:

• transport policy, scientific and technical information (cooperation being based on modern information technologies);
• international transport corridors (based on the UIC Cargo Transportation Platform and Security Platform)
• innovations: introduction of electronic document flow; development and implementation of joint railway transport projects as well as projects implemented in the interests of transport and logistics companies;
• international education.

In order to implement joint projects in the above mentioned areas the CCTT and UIC will establish specific contact groups for each area.

The CCTT Secretariat participated in the following UIC events:

The first Meeting of the UIC Working group "Security - border Crossing, International corridors" (Security – BIRC/ Border Crossing, International Rail Corridors). (18-19 February 2013, Warsaw)

79th General Assembly of UIC (07.12.2011, Paris);

13th Asian Regional Assembly of the UIC (17.04.2012, Taipei);

Seminar on the safety of goods transportation on the ITC (26.04.2012, Vilnius);

Meetings of the Management Committee of the Platform safety (05.03.2012, Berlin; 12.06.2012, Paris);

Cargo forum (12.06.2012, Paris).

81st General Assembly of UIC (12.12.2012, Paris);

12th Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Management Committee and 16th Meeting of the Asia-Pacific regional Assembly of the International Union of Railways (25-26 November 2013 Sydney, Australia)

83rd General Assembly of the International Union of Railways (12 December 2013 Paris, France)

Working Meeting on the development of a joint memo of the CCTT/UIC "Ensuring the safety of goods transported in covered wagons and containers by rail in the Euro-Asian traffic". (29.01.2014, Moscow)

The third WG Meeting of the UIC Security ‑ BIRC (26-27 March 2014 in Helsinki, Finland)

UIC Global expert group (GTE) Meeting (13 may 2014 Paris, France)

UIC freight forum (14 may 2014 Paris, France)

Training session of UIC "Logistics chains in railway transport and public-private partnership" (21-23 may 2014 MIIT Moscow, Russia)

Global rail freight conference GRFC – 2014 (24-25 June 2014 Vienna, Austria)

International forum UIC Market Place Seminar 2015 (24-25 September 2015. Antwerp, Belgium)

87th General Assembly of the UIC (1 December 2015. Paris, France)

Meeting of the Management Committee Meeting of the Work Group of the Platform UIC Security-border crossing, International railway corridors (Security-BIRC) (22 January 2016 Rome, Italy)

7th UIC Security Platform Work Group Session "Security-BIRC", International Transport Corridors (13-14 April 2016. Almaty, Kazakhstan)

5th international conference of UIC on freight rail transport (22-23 June 2016. Rotterdam, Netherlands)

88th General Assembly of UIC (5-6 July 2016) – (Paris, France)

8th Plenary Meeting of the Work Group of the UIC Security Platform "Security-border crossing, International transport corridors" (Security-BIRC) (12-14 Oct 2016. Paris, France)

89th General Assembly of UIC (30 November - 1 December 2016) St. Petersburg, Russia)

9th meeting of the Work Group of the Platform UIC Security-border crossing, International railway corridors (Security-BIRC) (11-12 April 2017). Ostrava, Czech Republic)

"Security week" (June 6-9, 2017. Paris, France)

Asia-Pacific regional Assembly (APA) of UIC (19 -23 June 2017. Beijing, China)

90th General Assembly of UIC (10 July 2017. Istanbul, Turkey)

24th session of the Asia-Pacific regional Assembly of UIC, round table on railway infrastructure development in the Asia-Pacific region (31 October 2017. St. Petersburg, Russia)

Meeting of the UIC Working group on Euro-Asian corridors (22 November 2017) - (Paris, France)

Meeting of the Executive Council of UIC, 91-th General Assembly of the UIC (5-7 December 2017. Paris, France)

6th global conference on freight rail transport of the International Union of railway workers (UIC) (26-28 June 2018. Genoa, Italy)

92nd General Assembly of the International Union of railway workers (4-5 July 2018. Madrid, Spain)

UIC APRA session on project activities (29 August 2018 Moscow, Russia)