Ten EU states demand Commission action on rail delivery times
EU: Austria, backed by nine other EU member states, has asked the European Commission to draft a strategy for the European railway industry, placing the issue on the agenda of the Transport Council meeting in Luxembourg on 8 June.
Croatia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal and Romania co-signed the initiative alongside Austria. The proposal calls on the Commission to bring manufacturers, ministers and national authorities together to address delivery times across the sector.
The model draws on existing industrial action plans for the automotive and maritime sectors. The initiative lands five weeks before the Commission’s mandatory three-year review of the Foreign Subsidies Regulation, due 13 July, which could lead to changes affecting how the FSR applies to rail procurement.
What the ten member states are asking for
The ten states want the Commission to convene rolling stock manufacturers, transport ministries and national rail authorities to identify bottlenecks in the production chain. The proposal frames delivery times as a competitiveness issue: contracts for new trains can take years to translate into trains in service, leaving operators waiting for fleets they have already paid for.
The initiative comes amid growing pressure from individual member states on the same theme. Spain’s transport minister has previously argued that delivery times of up to eight years put European manufacturers at a disadvantage against faster producers such as China’s CRRC.
Germany’s signature is notable given Deutsche Bahn’s own fleet pressures, though the initiative does not name individual operators or projects.