The Agreement for the Operation of Non-Public Tracks in the System of Contractual Obligations in Belarus and Russia

Introduction. In the Republic of Belarus and in the Russian Federation, the railway holds a key place in the freight transportation system. Therefore, special attention is paid to the issue of the formation of appropriate infrastructure, including the construction and operation of auxiliary facilities, in particular, non-public tracks, which requires the development and improvement of appropriate legal forms. One of these forms is the agreement for the operation of a non-public track, which is introduced by acts of special legislation, primarily by the Charter of Public Railway Transport in Belarus and in Chapter 4 of the Charter of Railway Transport of Russia dated January 10, 2003, No. 18-FZ. In legal science, the legal essence of this agreement is debatable. The specified agreement is classified both as an organizational one, and as a services agreement, and as a special transport agreement (an independent agreement-based type), and as a mixed property agreement. Meanwhile, in the transport legislation, the specified agreement is settled as concisely as possible, which can potentially lead to collisions and disputes between the participants in the transportation relationship. Therefore, the purpose of the proposed study is an attempt by means of comparative legal analysis to identify not only the content of obligations arising on the basis of an agreement for the operation of a non-public track, but also to assess the prospects and ways of developing the legal regulation of this sphere in Belarus and Russia. Methods: the methodological framework for the study is a set of general scientific and special methods of scientific cognition, in particular, comparative law, the method of systemic and structural analysis, etc. Results: based on the study and comparison of Belarusian and Russian legislation, as well as the provisions of the civil doctrine, the legal nature of the agreement for the operation of nonpublic tracks is clarified. The author’s position regarding the place of the said agreement in the system of civil agreements is substantiated; the issues of improving the statutory regulation of relations arising out of the operation of the named object are raised. Conclusions: as a result of the study, the conclusion on the complex nature of the legal regulation of the transport sphere is substantiated, which is directly manifested in the specifics of the contractual structure under consideration, and the term “agreement for the operation of non-public tracks” itself is a collective symbol that is designed to fix the features of various civil obligations in relation to the transportation process involving the use of tracks not belonging to the owner of the infrastructure. It is established that, taking into account the specific factual circumstances between the participants of the transportation process, one way or another, involving the use of non-public tracks, the relations are formed by their legal nature corresponding to the relations of irregular lease, paid services, usufruct (easement), as well as relations of a mixed nature, mediated by mixed agreements containing the elements of all the listed agreement-based types.