SNCF Group is a leader in passenger mobility, transport, and freight logistics. And we plan to keep growing, becoming a major player in the industry and a worldwide standard-setter for all types of mobility.

Our Ethics Programme will help us meet this goal. It permeates everything we do, both inside and outside the company, and is geared around four main priorities:

• identify the principles of conduct we expect employees to follow and the best practices that result from them
• disseminate these principles, promote them, live by them, and encourage others to live by them as well
• ensure that we practice these principles, identify any shortcomings, and correct them
• sanction inappropriate conduct.

The Group Ethics Division is responsible for promoting and strengthening an ethics-driven culture across SNCF. It guides our 283,000 employees to be exemplary and responsible, ensuring that every decision we take makes a positive contribution to society and respects our ethical commitments.

Our ethics programme’s aims to:

• make each employee an effective, responsible stakeholder who respects both our company and other people
• help us protect SNCF Group, our image and our interests from every type of threat
• give us the tools we need to better meet the expectations of the French State, transport authorities, our clients and our suppliers, and to deepen their trust in us.

In 1998, then-SNCF Group Chairman Louis Gallois created an oversight office to develop the company’s ethics programme. After careful consideration, the office released its first tangible product in 2000―our original Code of Ethics. In late 2009, the oversight office became the Ethics and Deontology Division, with its scope expanded to include all of the tasks required to promote ethical conduct at SNCF.

In 2011, the Division started to focus on raising awareness of and providing guidance on ethical matters. These efforts led to the adoption of an Ethics Guide in February 2011 and the implementation of a whistleblowing system in June 2011. In 2013, we established a network of ethics officers to ensure these ethical standards were consistently applied throughout the Group.

In 2014-15, we developed and deployed our first anti-corruption initiative. And in late 2016, we adopted our new SNCF Group Ethical Charter, which sets out 5 values and 11 principles of conduct, and supplemented it with our Ethics Memo, a quick-reference guide to the Charter (revised in 2023). Then, in 2017, we applied the 8 anti-corruption measures required by France’s Sapin II Act.

In 2018, we rolled out MyEtic on all our employees’ business phones. This app provides all the information and documents they need on ethics matters. In 2022, we set up a whistleblowing system—available in 12 languages—that all SNCF employees (including trainees, temps), and even our suppliers, can use to report ethical situations.

Reporting to the Chief Human Resources Officer, SNCF Group’s Ethics Officer oversees responses to internal or external reports of code of conduct violations across all SNCF companies and departments.  He/she is assisted by a team of internal and external experts in various ethical matters, including procurement processes, financial misconduct, personal or sexual harassment, and discrimination.

We know how important ethical conduct is, both for employee development and for our technical, financial and business performance. That’s why as far back as 2006 we created our own Group Ethics Committee.

The Group Ethics Committee:

• makes ethics policy recommendations to SNCF’s Chairman
• ensures that we adopt the right policies and take the right steps to help our employees learn the principles in the SNCF Group Ethics Charter, take ownership of them and comply with them
• helps adapt the Ethics Charter to SNCF’s various divisions, business areas, functions and subsidiaries through adoption of their own codes of ethics and/or good conduct.
• reviews feedback from the Group’s Ethics Division and makes suggestions based on lessons learned
• proposes ways of incorporating ethical principles into employee training, particularly during onboarding and managerial training courses.