A German court has set DB InfraGO’s 2027 cost ceiling above both the regulator’s figure and the company’s own application. The bill falls on train operators, among them a regional rail sector already suing the same regulator to pay less.
In an urgent ruling communicated on 1 October, the Administrative Court of Cologne set the ceiling on total costs for infrastructure manager DB InfraGO at EUR 8.203bn for 2027. The Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) had approved EUR 7.317bn, and DB InfraGO had applied for EUR 7.548bn. The ruling cannot be appealed, the news agency dpa reported.
The ceiling is the cost base for next year’s track access charges. DB InfraGO challenged the regulator’s decision, published on 24 June, in court in July. The money at stake in this ruling is a federal maintenance subsidy that has not yet been agreed.
A subsidy without an agreement
According to the German legal publication Recht & Politik, the court found BNetzA’s decision unlawful because the regulator had counted federal support for maintenance in 2027 as a cost reduction. No binding agreement between the federal government and DB InfraGO covered that support. The agreement was not in place when BNetzA decided and was due to be concluded only by the end of 2026, the publication wrote.
BNetzA must apply the ruling when it processes the 2027 charges. No reaction from the regulator or DB InfraGO had been published by 2 October.
Freight and passenger associations said in September that DB InfraGO was suing to add EUR 230m to its 2027 costs, roughly the gap between its application and the regulator’s figure.
The court went about EUR 655m further. BNetzA had cut about EUR 880m from the ceiling by counting the expected maintenance support, according to the same publication, and the court removed that deduction entirely. None of the reports seen explains why DB InfraGO’s own application was lower.
Dpa, citing rail circles, reported that DB is not expected to use the higher ceiling in full.
Two rulings, two directions
The ruling follows two urgent decisions by the same court in July, which rejected DB InfraGO’s requests for higher station charges for 2025 and 2026. The court found that the company had not presented sound figures or a verifiable calculation method.
Two further cases are pending. DB InfraGO is challenging a BNetzA decision on train path capacity for Italian operator Italo, in a case filed in August.
The Federal Association of Regional Rail (BSN), which represents the regional transport authorities, sued the regulator on 31 August over its July recalculation of 2026 charges, which raised regional rates by 9% and added about EUR 400m in retroactive payments. The recalculation followed a ruling by the EU Court of Justice in March.
The disputes were already running on three fronts in August, with DB InfraGO and the regional sector suing the same regulator from opposite directions. In the first ruling that touches 2027, the network has won.
Who pays
DB InfraGO’s application for 2027 sought to raise freight rates by 12.6%, regional rates by 7.7% and long-distance rates by 5.3%, dpa reported. For a standard freight train, the charge would rise from EUR 3.48 to EUR 3.92 per train-km, which freight operators’ association Die Güterbahnen put at about EUR 112m a year. Those are application figures. The final increases for 2027 have not been set.
Ingo Wortmann, president of the Association of German Transport Companies (VDV), called the ruling an alarming signal and demanded short-term relief and a reform of the charging system.
Industry associations said in September that the reform will not be in place by 1 January 2027.
Regional services are ordered and paid for by the federal states, and dpa reported a risk of cuts to regional services. BSN president Peter Panitz said in September that contracts had been signed on the assumption of a price brake. In the worst case services could be reduced, he said, although cancellations are contractually limited.
BNetzA must now set 2027 charges on a ceiling a court wrote for it. The maintenance agreement the regulator counted on is due by the end of 2026. Whether it will change the 2027 ceiling has not been said.