In 1991, following the partly-successful Swedish example and wishing to create an environment where new rail operators could enter the market, the European Union issued EU Directive 91/440. This required of all EU member states to separate "the management of railway operation and infrastructure from the provision of railway transport services, separation of accounts being compulsory and organisational or institutional separation being optional", the idea being that the track operator would charge the train operator a transparent fee to run its trains over the network, and anyone else could also run trains under the same conditions (open access).