France has no plan yet to fund thin TGV routes
FRANCE: TGV services to smaller cities will keep depending on SNCF’s internal cross-subsidy for at least another three to five years. The government has published the Bussereau review of how to pay for loss-making high-speed routes in an opening market — and kept only its mildest levers, leaving the question of long-term financing open until the 2030s.
The review comes from former transport minister Dominique Bussereau, commissioned in February to design a new financing model for the loss-making services. Its conclusions have been published together with the government’s response, as input to the transport framework law currently before parliament.
France counts 180 domestic TGV destinations, and a share of them survive because SNCF covers their deficit with margins from its strongest routes. The review notes that this imbalance predates competition — but open access makes the internal cross-subsidy more fragile and easier to contest, with Trenitalia France already on the profitable axes and Velvet planning a 2028 launch on the Atlantic corridor.
What the review proposes
The review sets out three near-term levers to keep the fragile routes running: performance gains, dedicated instruments in framework agreements, and modulation of the track access charges paid by operators.
A fourth lever is reserved for the longer term. Once competition is fully established, the review points to either a cross-operator equalisation fund or contractual arrangements with regional and local authorities — either of which would replace a mechanism that today lives entirely inside SNCF’s accounts.
The government takes the soft options
The government’s response keeps only the near-term levers: three to five years of stabilisation, with further work on performance gains and incentive mechanisms. The government notes that these preserve SNCF Réseau’s revenues.
Reflection on long-term financing continues towards the 2030s. The equalisation fund and contractual arrangements remain options for that later stage.
A question the state can no longer avoid
The Senate warned in May that the internal cross-subsidy is not tenable in an open market, and that taxpayers risk picking up the bill for the thin routes.
Italy, by contrast, keeps its commercial high-speed services and its subsidised regional connections structurally separate. In France, territorial coverage is financed inside the commercial TGV system itself.
That is why the question now sits on the government’s table — and the government’s answer is to leave the model in place while it still holds.