SBB Personenverkehr employs around 15,000 staff, from drivers and train attendants to sales, maintenance and the transport police. In 2025 SBB carried a record 1.43 million passengers a day, up from 1.39 million in 2024, with punctuality at 94.1 percent.

The division is split into two halves. Passenger Services Production covers railway production, rolling stock maintenance, fleet projects, depots, transport police and safety; Passenger Services Markets covers long-distance, international and regional services, sales, marketing and first- and last-mile offers.

The long-distance concession

Switzerland lies outside the Single European Railway Area (SERA). Rail relations with the EU rest on the 1999 land transport agreement, which governs access and standards without extending full EU market opening to the Swiss network.

Long-distance services run under a concession granted by the Federal Office of Transport, valid from December 2019 to December 2029. It was the first time the concession was opened to applicants other than SBB, and the outcome left the great majority of the network with the incumbent.

SBB holds the concession but delegates specific routes to BLS and Südostbahn, an arrangement the three companies and the federal office intend to continue into the concession period beginning in December 2029. Regional traffic follows a different logic again, ordered and funded by the cantons and the Confederation.

Subsidiaries and shareholdings

Regional services are partly delivered through separately incorporated companies in which the division holds stakes: Thurbo, zb Zentralbahn, RegionAlps, Tilo and Lémanis, alongside SBB GmbH in southern Germany. Each operates as a local company within the SBB brand.

International services are run jointly with the neighbouring railways. SBB works with DB, ÖBB, SNCF and Trenitalia on cross-border traffic, with night trains coordinated through the Austrian network and Paris services through the Lyria joint venture.

That structure reflects a small market with long borders. Almost every high-value SBB long-distance route continues into a neighbouring country, so rolling stock approval and timetable coordination with foreign railways are core to the division’s work.

Fleet and cross-border approval

The Giruno, built by Stadler Rail as the RABe 501, is the mainstay of international services on the north-south axis, with 41 units in service. It runs at up to 250 km/h and is approved for Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Italy.

Multi-country operation dictates the specification. The trains carry multiple power systems and signalling packages, and use low-floor entry designed for both the 55 cm platforms common in Switzerland, Austria and Italy and the 76 cm platforms in Germany.

Domestic operation is shaped by the Swiss signalling migration. All lineside signalling points have been equipped with ETCS Level 1 Limited Supervision, while ETCS Level 2 is used on the base tunnels and selected main lines, with the long-term aim of cab signalling across the whole standard-gauge network.

NS carries more than one million passengers a day and employs over 20,000 people. In 2025 it recorded 90.7 percent of passengers arriving within five minutes of the scheduled time, with ridership returning to around 95 percent of the 2019 level.

The company operates in an unusually dense network environment. The Dutch network is short by European standards but heavily used, which makes capacity and punctuality the defining operational constraints.

The main rail network concession

NS holds the concession for the main rail network, the Hoofdrailnet, for the period 2025-2033. It was awarded in 2023 by the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, which is the concession-granting authority; the Ministry of Finance holds the shares.

The ministry pays NS a subsidy of 13 million EUR a year across the concession period, reflecting passenger volumes that had not recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Under the previous concession the payment ran the other way, with NS paying for the right to operate.

The concession was directly awarded rather than tendered, a route that the market pillar of the 4th Railway Package restricts to defined circumstances. Performance indicators cover punctuality, seat availability and, newly, avoided carbon dioxide emissions.

Infrastructure lies elsewhere

NS does not own or manage the network it runs on. ProRail was separated from the company in 2003 and is responsible for infrastructure, capacity allocation and traffic control.

Freight was separated earlier still: NS Cargo was merged into DB Cargo in 2000, taking the company out of the freight market entirely. What remains is a passenger operator, a station business and bicycle parking facilities.

That structure means NS is a network user alongside Arriva, Qbuzz and other regional operators holding concessions from provinces and regional authorities. The regional concessions have been tendered for years; only the main network has stayed with the incumbent.

The end of foreign operations

Abellio was the vehicle for NS activities abroad, set up on the reasoning that a liberalising European market would eventually reach the Netherlands. It grew into a substantial operator in the United Kingdom and Germany.

The UK business was sold to its management in February 2023 and renamed Transport UK Group. The German business went to BeNEX in October 2024, ending foreign operations after more than twenty years. Across that period Abellio’s net financial effect for NS was around 260 million EUR negative.

International services were also taken out of the concession. Cross-border trains to Berlin, Brussels, Paris, London and Vienna now run in open access, registered with the Dutch regulator ACM and operated with partner railways including DB, Eurostar Group, SNCB, ÖBB and SBB.

RFI manages 16,832 km of active railway lines, 24,564 km of track in total and around 2,200 stations. Around 9,000 trains run on that network every day, passenger and freight combined.

The company was created to comply with the European requirement to separate network management from transport operations. Before 2001 the Italian network was managed directly by Ferrovie dello Stato, the same entity that ran the trains.

Access, paths and charges

As the Infrastructure Manager (EU definition), RFI publishes the Network Statement under Legislative Decree 112/2015, setting out network characteristics, access conditions and the rules for allocating capacity. It is the document any operator planning to enter the Italian market starts from.

Charging is set through a tariff system approved for multi-year periods, currently 2025-2029, with the Transport Regulation Authority as the reviewing body. Access charges are a direct input to any operator’s cost base, which is why the tariff review is followed closely by open-access operators.

Investment is governed separately through Programme Contracts with the Italian state, which fix what is built and maintained and with what funding. This splits RFI’s income into two streams with different logics: charges paid by operators, and state money tied to construction programmes.

The ERTMS programme

Italy equipped its high-speed lines with ERTMS from the outset, beginning with the Rome-Naples line opened in December 2005. Those lines run under ETCS Level 2 at 300 km/h operating speed.

RFI has since committed to extending ERTMS across the entire national network by 2036, at a stated investment of around 15 billion EUR. It is one of the largest single signalling migrations under way in Europe.

The first phase is financed with 2.5 billion EUR from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) and covers roughly 2,800 km, with an interim milestone of 1,400 km reached on schedule. Deployment requires both trackside equipment and onboard fitment, which ties the programme to the fleet renewal of every operator using the network.

Corridors, ferries and stations

Several European Transport Corridors run across RFI’s network, including the Alpine crossings towards Austria, Switzerland and France. Corridor work brings the company into planning and funding processes defined at EU level rather than nationally.

RFI’s position in the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) also determines which upgrades qualify for European co-funding. Standards for line speed, axle load and train length on core network sections follow from the same framework.

The company’s remit extends beyond track. Through subsidiaries it operates the train ferries between the Italian mainland and Sicily and manages the largest Italian stations, both of which are treated as service facilities under EU access rules.

Trenitalia leads the group’s Passengers Business Unit and is the largest single user of the Italian network. Regional services alone account for more than 6,000 journeys a day and over 400 million passengers a year.

The company is licensed as a Railway Undertaking (EU definition) and buys capacity from RFI on the same commercial basis as its competitors, even though both companies share a parent. Its business divides into three distinct commercial logics: contracted regional traffic, subsidised intercity services and commercially operated high-speed trains.

Regional traffic carries the volume

Regional services run under public service contracts with the regions and autonomous provinces, which specify the service and pay for it. The regions are the clients; Trenitalia is the operator, and the contracts determine frequencies, fleet and quality standards.

Fleet renewal has been the main instrument of change. A programme worth around 7 billion EUR is intended to leave roughly 80 percent of the regional fleet as new-generation stock by 2027, supplied by Hitachi Rail and Alstom.

The company now has 1,009 new-generation regional trains in service: 674 delivered under the current programme and 335 acquired earlier. The stated target is 1,081 units by 2027.

Frecciarossa and the competition that shaped it

Italy opened its domestic passenger market well before EU law required it. Nuovo Trasporto Viaggiatori (NTV) began running Italo services in 2012 as the first open-access high-speed competitor in Europe. The 4th Railway Package made domestic market opening the European default eight years later, from the December 2020 timetable.

Trenitalia responded by increasing frequencies, restructuring its product classes and investing in the ETR 1000 Frecciarossa 1000, which operates at up to 300 km/h on the Italian high-speed network. Both operators use the same infrastructure and call at the same stations, so the competition plays out on frequency, price and product.

The fleet is still growing. In February 2026 the company set out a 2 billion EUR programme covering up to 74 further Frecciarossa 1000 sets, intended to be fully in service around 2030 and to support services outside Italy.

Operations beyond Italy

Trenitalia France has run Frecciarossa services between Milan and Paris since December 2021, competing directly with SNCF on the Paris-Lyon axis. The route was suspended after a landslide closed the Maurienne valley line and resumed during 2025.

In Spain, Trenitalia is the majority shareholder in ILSA, which operates 20 Frecciarossa 1000 sets under the Iryo brand on the Madrid corridors in competition with Renfe. Trenitalia holds 51 percent of ILSA, alongside Air Nostrum and Globalvia.

The UK operation ended on 20 July 2025, when the c2c commuter concession east of London passed to public ownership after eight years under Trenitalia. The company has since applied to run high-speed services between London and Paris.

FS Group reported operating revenues of 17.3 billion EUR in 2025 and technical investments of more than 18 billion EUR, the highest annual figure in its history. By the end of 2024 it had spent over 12 billion EUR of Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) funds, making it one of the plan’s principal implementers.

The group’s span is wider than rail alone. Anas, which manages Italy’s state road and motorway network, was brought into the group in 2018 and now leads a business unit of its own.

Five business units under one owner

Ahead of the 2025-2029 Strategic Plan the group was reorganised into five business units, each led by one company. Infrastructure - Railways is led by RFI, Infrastructure - Roads by Anas, Freight by FS Logistix, International Passengers by FS International and Passengers by Trenitalia.

Trenitalia, the group’s principal Railway Undertaking (EU definition), runs domestic passenger services from Frecciarossa high-speed trains to the regional services ordered by the Italian regions. RFI owns and manages the national network and sells capacity to every operator using it, including Trenitalia’s competitors.

FS International holds the activities abroad: Netinera in Germany, Hellenic Train in Greece, Qbuzz in the Netherlands and Trenitalia France. Its operating revenues passed 2.5 billion EUR in 2025, up around 20 percent on the previous year.

Separation inside a holding

EU law requires the essential functions of the Infrastructure Manager (EU definition) — allocating capacity and setting track access charges — to be exercised independently of any transport operator. Italy meets that requirement by separating the companies while keeping them under a single shareholder.

This holding construction is permitted by the Recast Directive (2012/34/EU) as long as the independence is real and demonstrable. Germany uses the same model. Spain keeps Adif outside Renfe’s group entirely.

Whether a competing operator can obtain train paths and station access on the same terms as the incumbent is policed by the Transport Regulation Authority. It rules on the charging system and hears complaints from operators.

An investment programme built on recovery funds

The 2025-2029 Strategic Plan sets out more than 100 billion EUR of investment across rail and road. An update presented in December 2025 extended the horizon further, to a total investment volume of 177 billion EUR over 2026-2034.

A substantial share is tied to NRRP milestones, which carry fixed completion dates agreed with the European Commission. ERTMS deployment, regional fleet renewal and upgrades to southern Italian lines all sit inside that framework.

Funding not spent by the NRRP deadline lapses. That is why the group’s investment profile is concentrated around the mid-2020s.

InnoTrans opens in Berlin on 22 September with more than 3,100 exhibitors and 180 world premieres, eight days after Eurostat reported that rail freight in the EU fell for a fourth consecutive year.

Rail carried 368.2 billion tonne-kilometres of freight in the EU in 2025, 1.8% less than the year before. Road haulage grew the same year.

The EU asks two things of rail freight at once. Operators must stand on their own under state aid rules, and the sector is meant to carry 50% more freight by 2030 under a target that binds no member state and that the EU’s own auditors called unrealistic.

Told to break even, operators cut the services that lose money, and the capacity to carry more goes with them. The capacity rules, the 740-metre requirement and the freight target all fall due in the same month of 2030.

Go deeper

Largest rail contract signed after twenty-month fight

POLAND: Infrastructure manager PKP Polskie Linie Kolejowe has signed a roughly EUR 940m contract to rebuild almost 95 km of the Rail Baltica line between Białystok and Ełk, with completion due in late 2029. The contractor was chosen three times after two awards were overturned.

The line will be double-track along its full length and get computer-based interlocking, with eight stations and 10 stops covered by the works and 32 grade-separated crossings replacing level crossings. Passenger trains will be able to run at 200 km/h on most of the section once all works are finished and ETCS has been commissioned. The infrastructure manager gives no date for ETCS.

The tender was launched in January 2025, and a ruling by the Warsaw Regional Court on 4 September cleared the way for signature. Chief executive Piotr Wyborski told the press conference that it is the largest single contract in the company’s history, according to news agency PAP.

It was the first tender in which the Polish infrastructure manager applied rules derived from a Court of Justice ruling, according to industry reports: only companies from the EU, the European Economic Area and countries covered by the WTO procurement agreement could bid.

Full story

PKP Cargo to share state claim with creditors

POLAND: PKP Cargo filed amended arrangement proposals with the Warsaw district court on 15 September. Three of six creditor groups are offered a share of any payout from the state-controlled operator’s PLN 1.52bn damages claim against the state. A separate court suspended that case again the same day.

The company will pass on 50% of any money it finally receives from the state treasury, net of public-law charges and the direct costs of the case, shared pro rata among tax creditors, banks and larger trade creditors, and state-controlled railway companies. No creditor can recover more than its original claim, and the mechanism runs until 31 December 2036.

The claim covers a 2022 decision by then prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki that required PKP Cargo to carry imported coal. State-owned PKP SA holds 33.01% of the operator’s capital, so the state sits on both sides of the case.

Other parties to the proceedings have until 15 October to submit their own proposals, and the creditors’ council is to give its opinion by the same date.

Full story

Knorr-Bremse wins Europe’s first commercial DAC contract

AUSTRIA: Knorr-Bremse has won a contract to fit a 23-wagon ÖBB Rail Cargo Group train with digital automatic couplers (DAC). The German supplier calls it Europe’s first commercial DAC equipment contract. The couplers are due to enter daily freight service from 2028 in an EU-funded trial.

The train is one of seven pilot trains in the Pioneer Digital Automatic Coupling project, which covers about 500 couplers on 250 freight wagons and 15 locomotives.

Knorr-Bremse announced the contract from Munich on 17 September without disclosing the value or the date of signing. Rail Cargo Group has not published a statement of its own.

Full story

POLAND: Infrastructure manager PKP Polskie Linie Kolejowe has signed a roughly EUR 940m contract to rebuild almost 95 km of the Rail Baltica line between Białystok and Ełk, with completion due in late 2029. The contractor was chosen three times after two awards were overturned.

PKP Polskie Linie Kolejowe signed the contract at Białystok station with a consortium led by Track Tec Construction. The other members are Intop, Intop Infrastruktura, Unibep and Pomorskie Przedsiębiorstwo Mechaniczno-Torowe. The contract is worth roughly EUR 940m net and EUR 1.16bn gross.

The signing moves the section from procurement to construction. The tender was launched in January 2025, and a ruling by the Warsaw Regional Court on 4 September cleared the way for signature. Works are scheduled to run to the fourth quarter of 2029.

What the contract covers

The line will be double-track along its full length and get computer-based interlocking. Eight stations and 10 stops are covered by the works.

Passing stations will be built at Podlasek and Lipińskie Małe to add capacity. Level crossings will be replaced by 32 grade-separated crossings.

Passenger trains will be able to run at 200 km/h on most of the section once all works are finished and the European Train Control System (ETCS) has been commissioned. The Polish infrastructure manager gives no date for ETCS. Freight trains will be able to run at 120 km/h with lengths of 750 m, and the planned Białystok–Ełk journey time is 55 minutes.

Two overturned awards

The infrastructure manager first chose a consortium of Torpol and Mirbud in November 2025, which had submitted the lowest-priced bid. Poland’s public procurement appeals chamber ordered that bid rejected on 19 January 2026 after an appeal from the second-ranked consortium. According to industry reports, Mirbud had not disclosed a 2022 environmental fine in its bid documents.

The second choice was a consortium of Budimex, Porr and Budimex Kolejnictwo, and the Track Tec consortium, ranked third on price, appealed.

According to the reports, it challenged the compliance measures, known as self-cleaning, that Budimex had taken after the appeals chamber found signs of bid coordination between group companies in a separate tender. The appeals chamber ordered the Budimex bid rejected in March, and the Track Tec consortium was chosen in April.

Torpol and Mirbud had already taken their exclusion to court. On 1 June the appeals chamber turned down two further appeals against the April award, from the Torpol-Mirbud consortium and a consortium of Intercor and Trakcja. The Warsaw Regional Court dismissed the Torpol and Mirbud complaint on 4 September and upheld the exclusion.

Signing in Białystok

“This contract is a success. After months of procedures we are finally entering the construction stage of one of the largest railway projects in our country,” said Deputy Infrastructure Minister Piotr Malepszak.

Piotr Wyborski, chief executive of the infrastructure manager, told the press conference that it is the largest single contract in the company’s history, according to news agency PAP. The company’s own press release is headlined as a record contract.

The corridor toward Lithuania

Białystok–Ełk is part of the E75 line, the Polish branch of Rail Baltica toward the Lithuanian border. The deputy minister said the section opens the prospect of fast journeys to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

The works are split into three projects – Białystok–Knyszyn, Knyszyn–Osowiec and Osowiec–Ełk. All three are co-financed by the EU’s Connecting Europe Facility. The grant amount per project is not stated.

In Lithuania, infrastructure manager LTG Infra moved to terminate the construction contract for Rail Baltica’s bridge over the Neris in June. A new tender for the bridge has not yet been published.

Third-country contractors excluded

The chief executive said in the company’s statement that the work goes to contractors that do not come from so-called third countries.

It was the first tender in which the Polish infrastructure manager applied rules derived from a ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union, according to industry reports. Only companies from the EU, the European Economic Area and countries covered by the World Trade Organization’s procurement agreement could bid.

The European Commission has proposed a European preference in public procurement. The Polish statement does not say whether any bidder was excluded under the third-country condition.

POLAND: PKP Cargo filed amended arrangement proposals with the Warsaw district court on 15 September. Three of six creditor groups are offered a share of any payout from the state-controlled operator’s PLN 1.52bn damages claim against the state. A separate court suspended that case again the same day.

The filing is part of the company’s court-supervised restructuring (sanacja). It keeps the division of creditors into six groups and the main terms of the version submitted in June.

The new element is a mechanism the company calls additional satisfaction (Dodatkowe Zaspokojenie), funded by money PKP Cargo might receive from the state over coal transports the government ordered in 2022. The court case was resumed and suspended again on 15 September while the company and the state negotiate a settlement.

How the coal mechanism works

PKP Cargo will pass on 50% of any money it finally receives from the state treasury, net of public-law charges and the direct costs of the case. The money is shared pro rata among groups I, III and IV – tax creditors, banks and larger trade creditors, and state-controlled railway companies. No creditor can recover more than its original claim, and the mechanism runs until 31 December 2036 or until the claim is finally settled.

Management board vice-president Paweł Miłek said acting jointly with creditors to enforce the claim could speed up and enlarge any payout, leaving the company better off even after sharing it.

The claim amounts to PLN 1,522,424,000, roughly EUR 351m, over a 2022 decision by then prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki that required PKP Cargo to carry coal imported by state-owned PGE Paliwa and Węglokoks. PKP Cargo sued the state treasury on 23 December 2025. State-owned PKP SA holds 33.01% of PKP Cargo’s capital, so the state sits on both sides of the case.

What each creditor group is offered

According to the company’s statement, the proposals cover the principal of the claims as follows:

• Group I, tax claims – 75% repaid, with access to the coal mechanism.

• Group II, trade creditors owed up to PLN 50,000, roughly EUR 11,500, and leasing companies – 100% repaid.

• Group III, banks, financial institutions and larger trade creditors – 50% repaid, with access to the coal mechanism.

• Group IV, state-controlled railway companies – 50%, settled by conversion into new series D shares, with access to the coal mechanism.

• Group V, social insurance institution ZUS – 100% of principal and ancillary claims.

• Group VI, PKP Cargo group companies and other creditors – 5% repaid.

Interest and ancillary claims are written off in every group except ZUS. Basic payments fall due within 12 months of the month in which final court approval is announced.

Other parties to the proceedings have until 15 October to submit their own proposals, and the creditors’ council is to give its opinion by the same date, the judge-commissioner has ruled. PKP Cargo had asked at the end of August for more time to file its own proposals.

A separate arrangement at wagon maintenance subsidiary Cargotabor is further along. Creditors backed it at the end of August, and the judge-commissioner has confirmed the result, PKP Cargo said on 10 September. The restructuring court must still approve it.

AUSTRIA: Knorr-Bremse has won a contract to fit a 23-wagon ÖBB Rail Cargo Group train with digital automatic couplers (DAC). The German supplier calls it Europe’s first commercial DAC equipment contract. The couplers are due to enter daily freight service from 2028 in an EU-funded trial.

Knorr-Bremse announced the contract from Munich on 17 September. It did not disclose the contract value or the date of signing. Rail Cargo Group, the freight arm of Austrian state operator ÖBB, has not published a statement of its own.

The train is one of seven pilot trains in the Pioneer Digital Automatic Coupling (PioDAC) project. From 2028 the two companies will test the couplers under real operating conditions, according to the release. Knorr-Bremse says the contract builds on earlier projects under Europe’s Rail, the EU’s rail research partnership.

What the order covers

The contract covers a single train. It consists of 23 freight wagons and one locomotive. Knorr-Bremse will fit the wagons with DAC systems, including electronic control units and sensors that monitor the wagons’ functions and condition digitally.

PioDAC as a whole covers about 500 DAC units on 250 freight wagons and 15 locomotives, according to the project’s own figures. Some of the seven trains will run across borders. The project’s website lists the Austrian train as a gravel service between Hegyeshalom in Hungary and Vienna, with shunting trials at the Wien Kledering hump yard.

DAC is designed to replace the manual screw coupling used on European freight wagons. The coupler also carries continuous power and data connections through the whole train. Knorr-Bremse says wagons can then be coupled and uncoupled at the push of a button or from a tablet.

Nicolas Lange, the Knorr-Bremse executive board member responsible for rail, said the two companies are among the pioneers in testing the technology. He said DAC increases safety for shunting staff and makes freight operations more efficient.

German funding call and Vienna demonstration

Germany’s transport ministry opened a roughly EUR 36m funding call for DAC pioneer trains in early September. The German programme is national and separate from PioDAC, which is co-funded by the EU’s Connecting Europe Facility.

ÖBB demonstrated DAC-equipped wagons against conventional screw couplings at the Floridsdorf freight yard in Vienna on 11 September. Rail Cargo Group began DAC train tests in Austria with a demonstration train in January. The Knorr-Bremse order is for a separate train intended for daily freight operations.

What the release leaves open

Knorr-Bremse did not disclose the number of couplers, any options for further trains or a start date within 2028. It named no further customers.

The supplier sees annual revenue potential in the hundreds of millions of euros from original equipment for train automation and digitalisation in Europe. The figure is the company’s own target.

Knorr-Bremse says DAC will be introduced to the market gradually over the next few years. The company will exhibit at InnoTrans in Berlin from 22 to 25 September.

InnoTrans opens in Berlin on 22 September with more than 3,100 exhibitors and 180 world premieres – eight days after Eurostat reported that rail freight in the EU fell for a fourth consecutive year.

By Dan Jensen

Rail carried 368.2 billion tonne-kilometres of freight in the EU in 2025, 1.8% less than the year before. Road haulage grew the same year.

The European Commission’s mobility strategy of December 2020 promised 50% more rail freight by 2030 and twice as much by 2050. Since then rail freight has risen once and fallen four times. The EU’s own auditors called the target unrealistic in 2023.

The vision

The vision is simple. A train moves a tonne of freight with a fraction of the emissions of a truck, and every freight train takes trucks off congested roads. The EU has tried since 2011 to turn that advantage into market share.

The European Court of Auditors examined the targets in a special report in 2023. It found them built on assumptions rather than on simulations of how much freight could realistically move. One calculation assumed trains twice as long as the network allows. Another assumed that a large annual investment gap would close, without saying how.

The targets bind no member state. They were not agreed with the member states and were never broken down by country or corridor. Nobody owns them.

Does rail freight still matter

Truck makers now argue that the premise has expired. The European vehicle manufacturers’ association ACEA published a study on 15 April this year, commissioned from Transport & Mobility Leuven and Panteia. It concludes that battery and hydrogen trucks will narrow or close the environmental gap with rail on many routes, and ACEA wants a mode-neutral freight policy in place of modal shift.

The French and German councils of economic advisers made a related point in a joint statement in 2025. Most freight in Europe travels short distances, where rail cannot compete, and the realistic potential for moving road freight to rail is small.

Both points hold as far as they go. Rail does not compete for the short haul and never did. Its market is the long, heavy, regular flow: steel, chemicals, containers from the ports, trailers across the Alps.

The counter-argument is pace. Fewer than one in twenty new trucks registered in the EU in the first half of 2026 was electric, by ACEA’s own count, and a truck stays on the road for well over a decade. The EU’s CO2 limits for trucks apply to new sales, not to the fleet. Diesel will dominate European roads through the 2030s.

The second argument is physics. A steel wheel on a steel rail needs far less energy than a tyre on asphalt, whatever powers it, as the International Energy Agency has pointed out. An electric truck removes the exhaust pipe. It does not remove the truck from the motorway or its demand from the grid.

The climate argument for rail weakens as trucks electrify, though at the pace the fleet is renewed that will take until the 2040s. What remains is energy, road space and the long, heavy flows that trucks handle badly. That is a case for making rail work on its main corridors.

Why road wins

Road wins on price, flexibility and reliability.

The Court of Auditors’ report starts with price. Without subsidy, moving a container by rail and truck costs roughly half as much again as moving it by truck alone. The truck goes door to door. The train needs a terminal at each end, and a truck anyway for the first and last leg.

The rules widen the gap. A train pays for every kilometre of track it uses, while member states may leave road sections untolled. Several allow heavier trucks in domestic traffic, which cancels the weight advantage meant for combined transport.

The network widens it further. Passenger trains come first when paths are allocated. Maintenance is done at night, when freight runs. A freight train thrown off its path by a disruption waits for the next free one, sometimes for days.

Then comes the border. A driver needs the language of every country the train crosses, and national rules on brake tests and train composition differ. A freight train can stand at a border for a day. A truck inside Schengen does not stop.

Long trains are what make rail cheap, and only about half of the core corridors can take them.

None of this is new. The auditors’ previous report on rail freight, in 2016, carried the title “still not on the right track”.

The weeks before the fair in Berlin brought examples. Deutsche Bahn chief executive Evelyn Palla said on 10 September that the company will run two, at most three, corridor renovations a year instead of four.

The European Investment Bank signed a loan on 14 September for a Romanian corridor line that is little more than half built after six years. Serbia and Romania plan back-to-back closures on the two lines that carry rail freight between Central Europe and Turkey.

Road’s advantage is made by rules as much as by the market. Track pricing, path priority and border procedures are political decisions, and each of them currently favours the truck. That is a case for changing the rules before adding the trains.

The operators

The economics of the previous section land in the operators’ accounts. A freight operator carries high fixed costs for locomotives, wagons, drivers and yards, and sells against a truck that carries none of rail’s handicaps. When volumes fall, the costs stay.

For decades the state-owned incumbents had their losses covered by their parent groups. EU state aid rules have ended that. DB Cargo has stood on its own finances since 1 January 2025 and must show the Commission lasting profitability by the end of 2026, a condition of its state aid. It is cutting nearly half its German workforce.

The pattern repeats. PKP Cargo is in court-supervised restructuring. ÖBB’s freight arm has reported a loss, the Belgian state has taken over Lineas, and SBB Cargo is closing freight points.

What goes first is single-wagon traffic, the service that collects individual wagons from factory sidings and costs structurally more to run than a truck. Every siding that closes sends its freight to the road.

The operators’ losses are the cost of the rules, carried by the companies. Told to break even, they shrink to the traffic that pays, and the capacity to carry 50% more goes with it. That is a case for deciding which rail freight services Europe wants, and paying for them openly.

What would change it

The remedies are known, and most are already on paper:

• Capacity: freight needs paths that are planned across borders and years ahead. The regulation on the use of railway infrastructure capacity, adopted in May, requires that from the timetable of December 2030.

• Train length: the core network must take 740-metre freight trains by the end of 2030.

• Combined transport: the EU rules date from 1992. Two revisions have been withdrawn, and the Commission has signalled that it will withdraw the third.

• Language: a revision of the train drivers directive was announced in 2022. No proposal had been tabled by June this year.

• Price: either road pays for distance as rail does, or rail pays less. Sweden has chosen the second and cuts freight track charges from 2028.

• Coupling: digital automatic coupling automates shunting and allows longer trains. Germany has opened funding for the first trains in commercial service.

Road rules are moving too. The revision of the directive on truck weights and dimensions is in trilogue.

On show in Berlin

The fair shows what the industry can build. Messe Berlin counts 180 world premieres, most of them in railway technology.

Transport Commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas opens it. When Czech MEP Ondřej Krutílek asked him in writing this summer why rail freight is losing ground, his answer for single-wagon traffic was the coupler, the news site Eunews reported.

The coupler is progress. It does not change who pays for the track, who gets the path or what happens at the border.

The bind

The EU and its governments ask two things of rail freight. They want operators that stand on their own in a market, and they want them to carry far more freight for the climate. The first demand is enforced, with state aid rules and profitability deadlines. The second is a target nobody owns.

The two work against each other. Operators told to break even cut the services that lose money, and capacity leaves a network that is supposed to grow. Road keeps the advantages the rules give it.

Parts of rail freight do not pay their way under those conditions and will not. The transport commissioner said as much about single wagons in his written answer this summer. Neither the Commission nor any government has drawn the conclusion and said which of those services it wants anyway, which it will let go, or who pays.

Nobody exhibiting in Berlin can settle that. Governments and EU legislators can, and their own calendar gives them until 2030. The capacity rules take effect with the timetable of December 2030. The 740-metre requirement falls due the same month. So does the freight target.

Main sources

• European Court of Auditors: Special report 08/2023, Intermodal freight transport: EU still far from getting freight off the road (March 2023)

• European Court of Auditors: Special report 08/2016, Rail freight transport in the EU: still not on the right track (2016)

• Eurostat: EU rail freight transport, 2025 data (14 September 2026)

• ACEA: Time to rethink modal shift: zero-emission trucks change the game, with the study by Transport & Mobility Leuven and Panteia (15 April 2026)

• ACEA: New commercial vehicle registrations, first half of 2026

• French Council of Economic Analysis and German Council of Economic Experts: Decarbonising road freight transport, joint statement (2025)

• International Energy Agency: The Future of Rail (2019)

GERMANY: DB Cargo expects to post a loss in 2026, the year its EU-approved restructuring plan was due to restore long-term viability. The rail freight operator must now renegotiate with the European Commission and is extending the restructuring to all 16 foreign subsidiaries.

Chief executive Bernhard Osburg said on 17 September, in remarks reported by German news agency dpa, that a break-even result is hardly possible this year. He attributed the shortfall to a one-off write-down on DB Cargo UK, which the company has put up for sale.

The British subsidiary is carried in the books at around EUR 260m more than DB Cargo expects to receive for it, according to company sources cited by the agency.

The Commission approved EUR 1.9bn in German state aid to DB Cargo on 29 November 2024 after assessing a restructuring plan meant to guarantee long-term viability by the end of 2026. Without the write-down, the chief executive said, DB Cargo would have broken even this year.

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ÖBB seeks new CEO and adds operations chief to holding board

AUSTRIA: ÖBB has opened the search for a successor to chief executive Andreas Matthä, whose term ends on 30 June 2027. The group is also adding a chief operating officer (COO) to its holding board to steer train operations group-wide. Applications close on 12 October.

ÖBB’s holding company has advertised both posts, and its supervisory board expects to have selected candidates by the end of the year. The board currently has two members, and the new post brings it to three.

According to ÖBB, the COO will rebuild the process it calls “Bahn-Produktion” – everything from the timetable to having trains ready for service – and steer it at group level.

EU law permits integrated groups of this kind, provided the infrastructure manager decides train path allocation and track access charges independently of the group’s operators. ÖBB’s announcement does not say how the COO’s group-wide remit over the timetable relates to ÖBB-Infrastruktur AG.

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EIB lends Romania EUR 630m to finish a railway six years in the making

ROMANIA: The European Investment Bank (EIB) has signed a EUR 630m loan with Romania for the upgrade of the 113 km Brașov–Sighișoara line. Construction began in 2020, and infrastructure manager CFR SA’s own report puts it at 60% complete, with both contracts now due in 2028.

Finance Minister Alexandru Nazare signed the agreement in Bucharest on 4 September, and the EIB countersigned in Luxembourg on 9 September. The total project cost is estimated at EUR 2.25bn, to be covered by the loan, EU funds and the state budget.

The project is split into three sections under two construction contracts, all of which started in 2020. A year ago, the Romanian infrastructure manager expected work on the middle section to finish in October 2026.

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Catalonia sets out plan for four new rail freight terminals

SPAIN: The Catalan government has approved a terminal strategy running to 2036 that commits roughly EUR 127m to four new rail freight terminals in Lleida, Penedès, Terres de l’Ebre and Empordà. The money covers a first phase from 2026 to 2031.

Rail carried 3% of land freight in Catalonia in 2025, the lowest figure in a series going back to 2006 and less than half the 6.3% recorded in 2020, according to the logistics observatory of Cimalsa, the Catalan government’s public logistics company, as analysed by the Catalan news agency ACN.

Only Lleida, which takes EUR 72m, has reached the stage of an informational study with a budget line, according to government sources.

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Duved night train contracted six months at a time

SWEDEN: Trafikverket, the Swedish transport administration, has signed a six-month contract with state-owned operator SJ for the Stockholm–Östersund–Duved night train from December, with three extension options only the state can trigger. The compensation is just under SEK 30m, roughly EUR 2.7m.

The agreement runs from 13 December 2026 to 13 June 2027 and requires one night train in each direction every day, the same pattern as today.

Any extension depends on the funding the administration is allocated in the coming years, said Lennart Kalander, head of the responsible department at Trafikverket. It has to decide before the end of 2026 whether to trigger the first option, which runs to 9 December 2029.

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GERMANY: DB Cargo expects to post a loss in 2026, the year its EU-approved restructuring plan was due to restore long-term viability. The rail freight operator must now renegotiate with the European Commission and is extending the restructuring to all 16 foreign subsidiaries.

Chief executive Bernhard Osburg said on 17 September, in remarks reported by German news agency dpa, that a break-even result is hardly possible this year. He attributed the shortfall to a one-off write-down on DB Cargo UK, which the company has put up for sale. DB Cargo has not issued a statement of its own.

The British subsidiary is carried in the books at around EUR 260m more than DB Cargo expects to receive for it, according to company sources cited by the agency. The write-down falls on the 2026 annual result.

What the state aid approval requires

The Commission approved EUR 1.9bn in German state aid to DB Cargo on 29 November 2024 under its guidelines on rescue and restructuring aid. It found the aid compatible with the internal market after assessing a transformation and restructuring plan meant to guarantee the company’s long-term viability by the end of 2026. In Germany the requirement is known as the black zero, a break-even result from 2026.

The aid itself was an open-ended profit and loss transfer agreement under which parent company Deutsche Bahn had covered DB Cargo’s losses since 2012. The Commission opened an in-depth investigation in January 2022 after a competitor complained, and examined four arrangements involving DB Cargo, three of them with Deutsche Bahn. Only the loss transfer agreement was found to be state aid.

That agreement has been terminated and has not applied since 1 January 2025. Deutsche Bahn no longer covers the freight subsidiary’s losses under it. The approval also rests on divestitures of DB Cargo activities and assets that Germany has committed to, which the Commission’s press release does not identify.

Restructuring moves beyond the home market

The restructuring has so far concentrated on Germany, where the plan removes roughly 6,200 of some 14,000 full-time positions. The chief executive said it will now cover the entire European business with its 16 foreign subsidiaries.

DB Cargo is examining which of those subsidiaries its European strategy requires. The report names none of them.

The argument to the Commission

The chief executive intends to convince the Commission that the German restructuring is on track. Without the write-down on the British subsidiary, he said, DB Cargo would have broken even this year. Earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) stood at minus EUR 58m in 2025, according to the agency.

The sale of DB Cargo UK is being run with advisory firm Interpath. Whether it has been completed was not disclosed.

AUSTRIA: ÖBB has opened the search for a successor to chief executive Andreas Matthä, whose term ends on 30 June 2027. The group is also adding a chief operating officer (COO) to its holding board to steer train operations group-wide. Applications close on 12 October.

ÖBB‘s holding company has advertised both posts, and its supervisory board expects to have selected candidates by the end of the year. The chief executive will have led the group for 11 years when his term ends.

The board of ÖBB-Holding currently has two members. Chief financial officer Manuela Waldner, whose term runs to June 2028, stays in place. The new post brings the board to three.

What the new board member will run

According to ÖBB, the COO will rebuild the process it calls “Bahn-Produktion” – everything from the timetable to having trains ready for service – and steer it at group level. Group IT management moves under the same board member.

The job advertisement asks for extensive experience in a large group and knowledge of the railway sector. It names five fields in particular: IT governance, operational technology, digitalisation, information security and data management.

For the chief executive post, ÖBB seeks candidates with several years of practice in a mobility company, economic competence and international expertise. The group is active in 18 countries, by its own count.

Why the board is being enlarged

Supervisory board chair Brigitte Ederer tied the enlargement to a structural reform of the group that is already under way.

“ÖBB faces major challenges such as rising passenger numbers, network load and the big topic of artificial intelligence,” she said in the announcement.

The reform is meant to strengthen the holding’s function within the group, according to the supervisory board chair. The chief executive has already begun that transformation, she said. Advertising the posts now is meant to let him put the new structures in place together with his successor and secure a handover.

One holding, three railway businesses

ÖBB-Holding owns the infrastructure manager ÖBB-Infrastruktur AG, the passenger operator ÖBB-Personenverkehr AG and the freight business Rail Cargo Group. The outgoing chief executive has led the group since 2016.

In December 2025 the supervisory board extended his contract to June 2027. Since 1 January 2026 he has also chaired the supervisory board of ÖBB-Infrastruktur AG.

EU law permits integrated groups of this kind, provided the infrastructure manager decides train path allocation and track access charges independently of the group’s operators. ÖBB’s announcement does not say how the COO’s group-wide remit over the timetable relates to ÖBB-Infrastruktur AG.

ROMANIA: The European Investment Bank (EIB) has signed a EUR 630m loan with Romania for the upgrade of the 113 km Brașov–Sighișoara line. Construction began in 2020, and infrastructure manager CFR SA’s own report puts it at 60% complete, with both contracts now due in 2028.

Finance Minister Alexandru Nazare signed the agreement in Bucharest on 4 September, and the EIB countersigned in Luxembourg on 9 September. The bank announced the deal on 14 September. The total project cost is estimated at EUR 2.25bn, to be covered by the loan, EU funds and the state budget.

The line lies on the Rhine–Danube and Baltic–Black Sea–Aegean corridors of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T). The project is split into three sections under two construction contracts, all of which started in 2020. A year ago, the Romanian infrastructure manager expected work on the middle section to finish in October 2026.

What the upgrade delivers

After the upgrade, passenger trains are to run at 160 km/h and freight trains at 120 km/h, with capacity for up to 29 passenger and 22 freight trains a day. The EIB expects around 4 million passengers and 6 million tonnes of freight a year. The line will take longer and heavier freight trains and be fitted with the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS).

“This is an investment in people, connectivity and Romania’s future,” EIB Vice-President Ioannis Tsakiris said.

Romania’s finance ministry said the loan, with a maturity of up to 27 years, will cover the national co-financing from the state budget. The bank’s advisory arm assisted the Romanian authorities in preparing the project.

Three sections, one status report

The 28 km middle section between Apața and Cața, built under a contract led by Greek contractor Aktor, stood at 60.27% physical progress in July with completion scheduled for February 2028, according to the infrastructure manager’s latest status report. The two outer sections, 84 km in total, were at 60.12% with a June 2028 deadline. They are built by the RailWorks consortium of Alstom, Aktor, Arcada Company and Euro Construct.

In October 2025, the same reporting put the middle section at October 2026 and the outer sections at April 2027. The outer sections include the Archița and Beia tunnels, where progress has been uneven.

Two tunnels and the old line

The middle section includes twin-bore tunnels at Ormeniș and Homorod, 6.9 km and 5.1 km long, which will be the longest rail tunnels in Romania. Both are being built under the Aktor-led contract.

Infrastructure watchdog Pro Infrastructură said in July that the new line will not be ready before 2030. It recommended repairing around 40 km of the existing line between Apața and Cața in the meantime.

Grants before the loan

Grants from the EU’s Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) in the 2014 and 2015 funding rounds, totalling roughly EUR 1.2bn, co-financed the two outer sections. The EIB describes its loan as sitting alongside EU funds and the state contribution.

The finance ministry said the project will continue to receive grants from the Transport Programme 2021–2027, Romania’s EU-funded transport programme. The ministry expects the project to be completed in 2029.

SPAIN: The Catalan government has approved a terminal strategy running to 2036 that commits roughly EUR 127m to four new rail freight terminals in Lleida, Penedès, Terres de l’Ebre and Empordà. The money covers a first phase from 2026 to 2031.

The Consell Executiu adopted the Estratègia catalana de terminals ferroviàries (ECTF) on 15 September. Regional minister for territory Sílvia Paneque presented the plan after the cabinet meeting. It was drawn up by her department with Cimalsa, the Generalitat’s public logistics company.

Rail carried 3% of land freight in Catalonia in 2025, the lowest figure in a series going back to 2006 and less than half the 6.3% recorded in 2020, according to Cimalsa’s logistics observatory as analysed by the Catalan news agency ACN. Volume was 2,645 million tonne-kilometres. Spain as a whole sits near the bottom of the EU for rail freight per inhabitant.

Four sites, four cargo profiles

Lleida takes the largest share, EUR 72m for a terminal serving animal feed, grain and agro-industry. Penedès gets EUR 30m for wine, cars and rolling-motorway traffic. Vilamalla in Empordà is allocated EUR 16.2m for meat, fresh produce and cars, and Terres de l’Ebre EUR 7m for timber and agro-industry.

The sites were chosen on documented demand from those sectors, the government says. The four add to three existing terminals at the ports of Barcelona and Tarragona and at La Llagosta north of Barcelona. Rail access to all of them runs over the state network managed by Adif.

Portbou and the gauge

Portbou, on the French border, is given a supporting role but no money within the EUR 126.96m. The Generalitat wants standard gauge there, and a standard-gauge link from Figueres to Portbou is listed as an action in the strategy. No timetable for the gauge change has been given.

The planning also allows for the Eix Transversal Ferroviari, a proposed Lleida–Girona line bypassing Tarragona and Barcelona. A first-phase study was put out to tender in August. The regional rail infrastructure company Ifercat has been tasked with taking it forward.

Targets and project status

The government sets the plan against a 10% rail share target for Spain and the EU’s 2030 goal of shifting 30% of road freight over 300 km to rail and waterways. It also argues that rail is cheaper than road for hauls beyond 100 km.

Only Lleida has reached the stage of an informational study with a budget line, according to government sources. The other three terminals are programmed in the strategy but have not reached that stage.

SWEDEN: Trafikverket, the Swedish transport administration, has signed a six-month contract with state-owned operator SJ for the Stockholm–Östersund–Duved night train from December, with three extension options only the state can trigger. The compensation is just under SEK 30m, roughly EUR 2.7m.

The agreement runs from 13 December 2026 to 13 June 2027 and requires one night train in each direction every day, the same pattern as today. SJ has operated the route year-round on Trafikverket’s behalf since summer 2018. Lennart Kalander, head of the responsible department at Trafikverket, said the contract secures the service until summer as a first step.

Any extension depends on the funding the administration is allocated in the coming years, he said. SJ said the agreement is adapted to the pace at which Trafikverket receives its funding. The contract is separate from Trafikverket’s other state-procured night train, Stockholm–Luleå–Narvik, which was awarded to SJ in June for two years.

The three options

The first option runs two and a half years, from 14 June 2027 to 9 December 2029. The second adds a year to 15 December 2030, the third another year to 14 December 2031. Together they could keep the train running for five years.

None of the options can be exercised by SJ. Trafikverket has to decide before the end of 2026 whether to trigger the first, once it knows its allocation for 2027, Kalander told Järnvägar.nu.

The price for the six months is somewhat higher than the corresponding period under the expiring agreement, he said. Jan Kyrk, commercial manager at SJ, put the level at roughly what the company received in the contract periods between 2018 and 2024.

Two routes, two contracts

The Duved train serves Jämtland with a single daily pair. Trafikverket contracts it directly with SJ, and the new agreement replaces one that expires in December.

The Övre Norrland route to Luleå and Narvik is the one Trafikverket put out to tender. That tender was cancelled in March when the administration found the bids too high, after which it awarded SJ the contract directly for December 2026 to December 2028.

Övre Norrland is also the route for which Trafikverket has ordered a new fleet from Talgo. The Duved route has no fleet order attached and will run on SJ’s existing couchette and sleeping cars throughout the new agreement.

Profit clause and rolling stock

The contract caps what SJ can earn on the service. If the operator’s profit exceeds an agreed level, part of the compensation is repaid to Trafikverket, Kyrk told the publication.

SJ is refurbishing 11 couchette cars and 46 sleeping cars for the Duved and Stockholm–Malmö routes, he said. The first refurbished cars entered service in December 2025, and the programme runs to 2030.

The first option expires in December 2029, a year before the refurbishment programme is due to finish.

GERMANY: Deutsche Bahn will cut its Generalsanierung, the programme of full-corridor refurbishments, from four corridors a year to two. A third comes only where technical need is acute.

Chief executive Evelyn Palla set out the change to journalists in Berlin on 10 September. Four large closures a year pull too much capacity out of the network, she said, and the number of corridors will be matched to what the federal infrastructure fund makes available.

The revised concept is being aligned with the Federal Ministry of Transport and will be presented shortly. Palla declined to give a year for completion; DB has not issued a written statement.

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Rail freight falls for a fourth year running

EU: Freight carried by rail across the EU fell 1.8% in 2025 to 368.2 billion tonne-kilometres, the fourth consecutive annual decline, according to Eurostat data published on 14 September. Volumes fell in 16 of the 24 member states with reported data and rose in eight.

Germany accounted for a third of the EU total with 123.5 billion tonne-kilometres, down from around 126 billion in 2024. Poland followed with 54.3 billion and France with 34.4 billion; the three markets together carry 57.5% of the EU’s rail freight.

Road freight grew over the same period. Eurostat’s release of 31 July put road haulage up 0.9% in 2025, and figures published on 29 July showed freight on inland waterways down 3.0%.

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TGV M pushed to autumn as Italian launch slips to 2028

FRANCE: SNCF Voyageurs and Alstom have moved the TGV M’s commercial debut on Paris–Marseille from September to autumn 2026. SNCF Voyageurs has separately confirmed that the train’s domestic services in Italy will not start before the second quarter of 2028.

The two companies said in a joint statement that the train, cleared by the French and European safety authorities in May, works as intended overall. They are extending the final run-in phase to adjust comfort and on-board service; Alstom will carry out the changes in the coming weeks, after which SNCF Voyageurs runs a further series of test trips.

The Italian delay came in a statement to AFP. The 15 TGV M sets ordered for the Italian network will be neither delivered nor authorised in 2026, and will not be ready for the launch planned for September 2027.

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Commission proposes European preference in procurement – and exempts rail services

EU: The European Commission has proposed a Public Procurement Act that lets public buyers favour European suppliers and restrict bidders from countries without reciprocal market access. Certain public transport contracts fall outside its scope, and industry association CER says rail services in liberalised markets are exempted.

The proposal replaces the three procurement directives from 2014 with a single regulation applying directly in all member states. Contracts are as a rule to be awarded on the best price-quality ratio rather than on price alone, and Regulation 1370/2007 on public passenger transport is amended in the same package.

CER said rail freight, high-speed, other commercial passenger services and public service obligation contracts are exempted when operated in a liberalised market segment, and has asked Parliament and Council to keep the exemptions.

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Siemens to build locomotive service centre near Poznań

POLAND: Siemens Mobility will build a locomotive service centre in Gądki near Poznań, its first in the country. The 4,300 square metre depot is due to open in 2027 and will service up to seven locomotives at a time for fleets across Central and Eastern Europe.

The site, announced on 14 September, will have around 5 km of electrified track, an underfloor wheel lathe, a dropping table and a test area, and will cover work from scheduled inspections to major overhauls and accident repairs. Siemens has maintained locomotives in Poland for more than 15 years and says the new site will consolidate that work in one place.

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EU: Freight carried by rail across the EU fell 1.8% in 2025 to 368.2 billion tonne-kilometres, the fourth consecutive annual decline, according to Eurostat data published on 14 September. Volumes fell in 16 of the 24 member states with reported data and rose in eight.

Germany accounted for a third of the EU total with 123.5 billion tonne-kilometres, down from around 126 billion in 2024. Poland followed with 54.3 billion, or 14.7% of the total, and France with 34.4 billion, or 9.3%. The three markets together carry 57.5% of the EU’s rail freight.

Road freight grew over the same period. The release of 31 July put road haulage up 0.9% in 2025, and figures published on 29 July showed freight on inland waterways down 3.0%.

Where the volumes fell

The sharpest falls were in Ireland, down 35.2%, Latvia, down 18.8%, and Estonia, down 17.3%. Both Baltic countries had already lost heavily the year before, Latvia by 32.4% and Estonia by 22.9%. The 2024 report attributed those declines to the end of freight traffic with Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.

Greece recorded the largest increase at 9.3%, followed by Portugal at 8.4% and France at 6.6%. The French growth comes on top of a 9.7% rise in 2024, when France added more tonne-kilometres than any other member state.

Measured against population, Luxembourg carried the most rail freight at 10.7 tonnes per inhabitant, ahead of Austria at 10.5 and Lithuania at 8.5. Ireland carried 0.03 tonnes per inhabitant, Greece 0.06 and Spain 0.5.

The 2018 peak and the German works

EU rail freight peaked at 410 billion tonne-kilometres in 2018. After a recovery in 2021, it has fallen every year since. The 2025 volume is roughly 10% below the peak and close to the level of 2020, when pandemic restrictions cut traffic by 8.4%.

The largest market has spent the period under a rolling programme of corridor closures. DB InfraGO’s renewal works have taken key freight routes out of service for months at a time. In a survey published on 8 September by the German operator associations, two thirds of the 36 responding companies said network capacity had fallen, and only one of the 36 reported better operational quality.

The September release does not break the German figure down by cause. The corridor programme is scheduled to run for several more years.

The modal shift target

The European Commission’s 2020 mobility strategy set a target of increasing rail freight traffic by 50% by 2030 and doubling it by 2050. Road’s share of EU freight rose 3.3 percentage points between 2014 and 2024. Rail’s share fell 0.3 points.

The 2025 figures arrive as the EU negotiates the next Connecting Europe Facility budget, the funding instrument for the freight corridors on which the target depends. The Council set out a partial negotiating position on the 2028–2034 instrument in December 2025.

The data cover only main railway undertakings, defined as companies carrying at least 200 million tonne-kilometres or 500,000 tonnes a year. Belgium’s figures are excluded for confidentiality.

FRANCE: SNCF Voyageurs and Alstom have moved the commercial debut of the TGV M, Alstom’s new-generation double-deck high-speed train for SNCF, on Paris–Marseille from September to autumn 2026. SNCF Voyageurs has separately confirmed that the train’s domestic services in Italy will not start before the second quarter of 2028.

The two companies said in a joint statement that the train, cleared by the French and European safety authorities in May, works as intended overall. They are extending the final run-in phase to adjust comfort and on-board service. Alstom will carry out the changes in the coming weeks, after which SNCF Voyageurs runs a further series of test trips.

The Italian delay came in a statement to AFP. The 15 TGV M sets ordered for the Italian network will be neither delivered nor authorised in 2026, and will not be ready for the launch planned for September 2027. SNCF Voyageurs pointed to deliveries and to an approval process more complex than the French one.

The items still open on board

The joint statement names comfort and on-board service as the areas for adjustment. Among the items are sensor adjustments and the payment terminals in the bar car, whose response time varies with the power supply along the route.

The autumn window opens on 23 September and closes on 21 December. The statement gives no date within it.

A letter to RFI in late July

Italian infrastructure manager Rete Ferroviaria Italiana (RFI) was informed by letter in late July. Ferrovie dello Stato (FS), RFI’s parent, has confirmed receiving it and says the late notice complicates the redistribution of the paths already allocated to SNCF.

SNCF would be the third operator on the Italian high-speed network, alongside Trenitalia and Italo. Those paths were allocated for a September 2027 start.

The dates so far

The TGV M was originally due in service before the Paris Olympics in 2024. The date then moved to 2025, to early 2026, to 1 July and to September. The joint statement is the fifth move of the French start date. The Italian date was moved in a separate announcement.

The train has run pre-commercial trips on the French network since its authorisation. No fare-paying passenger has yet travelled on it.

EU: The European Commission has proposed a Public Procurement Act that lets public buyers favour European suppliers and restrict bidders from countries without reciprocal market access. Certain public transport contracts fall outside its scope, and industry association CER says rail services in liberalised markets are exempted.

The proposal replaces the three procurement directives from 2014 with a single regulation applying directly in all member states. Contracts are as a rule to be awarded on the best price-quality ratio rather than on price alone. Regulation 1370/2007 on public passenger transport is amended in the same package.

CER, which represents operators and infrastructure managers, said rail freight, high-speed, other commercial passenger services and public service obligation contracts are exempted from the procurement rules when operated in a liberalised market segment. It has asked the European Parliament and the Council to keep the exemptions through the legislative process.

What the European preference allows

Public authorities in the EU spend around EUR 2.6tn a year on procurement, 15% of GDP, according to the Commission. Buyers would be able to restrict participation to operators and goods covered by the EU’s international commitments, require a minimum share of Union origin, or give covered tenders an advantage in the evaluation. Where the Union’s strategic interests so require, the Commission could close an individual procurement to operators, goods or services that are not covered.

The proposal names railways as one of the sectors where that Union interest can arise. It describes rail and shipbuilding as manufacturing sectors of a dual-use nature whose infrastructure, mobile assets and traffic management systems are critical to military mobility and security.

It follows the first concluded investigation in a rail tender under the Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR), in which the Commission in April cleared a Lisbon metro bid on condition that Chinese supplier CRRC was replaced. The FSR screens individual bids for state support from outside the EU. The Public Procurement Act would give buyers a general rule to apply before any bid is examined.

The rail exemption

Procurement rules continue to apply to entities operating in water, energy, transport and postal services. An entity can be exempted where its activity is directly exposed to competition on a market to which access is not restricted, which the Commission establishes on request from a member state or from the entity itself.

CER says operators competing in the same liberalised market today follow different purchasing rules depending on who owns them, and that the exemption would put them on an equal footing with each other and with exempted sectors elsewhere.

CER puts the procurement of new rolling stock at up to eight years and major infrastructure projects at up to 15. Shorter procedures would cut transaction costs and limit exposure to price increases during long tenders, it said. Executive Director Alberto Mazzola called the exemption logical, saying rail operators should not face procurement processes their competitors in the same market avoid.

Public service contracts

Certain contracts and concessions awarded for public service transport within the scope of Regulation 1370/2007 are excluded from the proposed regulation. The chapters on security and resilience and on European preference would still apply to them, and 1370/2007 is amended to that effect.

The rule covers public service contracts for passenger transport by rail and road, awarded and compensated by competent authorities. Competitive tendering became the general rule for rail public service contracts under the Fourth Railway Package. Competent authorities awarding them would be able to apply European preference requirements without following the procurement procedures.

Suppliers asked for cost of ownership

Ahead of the proposal, rail supply association UNIFE and three construction and dredging federations – EIC, EuDA and FIEC – called for tenders to be evaluated on the best price-quality ratio and on total cost of ownership over the life cycle. They also asked for a level playing field with bidders from third countries.

The proposal sets a minimum weighting of 30% for quality criteria, and 50% for contracts that are labour-intensive by nature, with a right for buyers to deviate where quality is secured by other means. UNIFE wants the preference and the quality weighting applied to rolling stock and infrastructure contracts. CER wants its members’ purchases outside the rules when they compete in open markets.

The proposal goes to the European Parliament and the Council. The Commission proposes that the rules apply two years after the regulation enters into force.