A single ticket to travel by train throughout Europe. The dream of many travellers, but an initiative that is still difficult to achieve. The objective was proposed in the re-election speech to the European Parliament by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, but in the five years of her previous mandate this aim was not achieved. Let’s see what difficulties the European Union executive has encountered and what could change this time.
Inconveniences for travellers
The purchase of tickets for travel between EU member states is often fragmented, with customers having to buy separate tickets from different operators. This means there is no protection if the first train is delayed, cancelled or they miss their connection. Although long-distance train travel is much preferable to air travel in environmental terms, thanks to its lower carbon emissions, these difficulties also discourage it. Ursula von der Leyen, confirmed as EU leader for another five years, has included in her political guidelines the idea of a single ticket to be used on European rails. The Brussels executive has proposed a new regulation on booking and issuing single digital tickets, so that EU travellers can “enjoy passenger rights for the entire journey”. A promise that does not sound original.
The failure
A similar commitment had already been made in December 2020, contained in the “Strategy for sustainable and intelligent mobility”, published by the EU Commission. This was followed by a proposal for a regulation on multimodal digital mobility services (known as Mdms), containing rules on cross-border travel and related guarantees.
Despite two years spent by Brussels experts consulting with stakeholders affected by the rules (train operators, travel associations, etc.), the proposal was rejected by the Scrutiny Office of the Regulatory Scrutiny Board, an internal quality control service that advises Commissioners on the suitability of legislative proposals submitted.
The difficulties of the regulation
A report was published in March 2024, which stated that work on the regulation was still “ongoing”, but there would be no discussions in the Council since September 2023. The Commission reiterated that it was a “complex dossier”, requiring careful technical work that had not yet been completed. The dossier was to be handled by the Commissioner for Transport Adina Ioana Vălean, a Romanian politician. The regulation envisaged two possibilities: creating an independent booking platform that could sell tickets, including combined tickets, from different operators thanks to access to all data. The alternative was a simple search platform that would communicate the different offers for sale.
According to Carlos Ambel, who works for the NGO Transport & Environment, the Commissioner delayed the publication of the document, “making it impossible to adopt it before the end of the legislature”. On the NGO’s website in September 2023, he wrote: “The EU regulation aiming to create a single ticket for European train travel is still languishing on the platform”, adding that “there is now a high risk that the current Commission will never propose the regulation”. That risk has indeed come true.
The opposition of the railway operators
The European railway sector has been regulated by a series of regulatory packages since 2001. The last chapter aimed to open up national markets to competition. “Markets are slowly welcoming foreign railway operators, but the EU still does not regulate ticket sales, leading railway monopolists to refuse to share complete information with booking platforms. As a result, consumers are deprived of useful travel information,” the Spanish transport expert stressed. Ambel thus highlighted that “railway operators fear losing revenue from ticket distribution and that it will put new railway competitors in the spotlight.” They are therefore the ones who are allegedly pushing to avoid this solution.
Risks for the railway sector
At European level, operators in the sector are represented by the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER). Measures to improve international ticketing “should not come at the expense of transport operators”, Alberto Mazzola, executive director of CER, told Euractiv. The reduced margins and high fixed costs with which railway companies operate would not allow for the approval of new rules that reduce these margins.
The original regulation was not just about rail travel, but aimed to integrate a range of transport, being able to compare different travel options and plan routes based on specific needs. It is possible, according to what von der Leyen stated in the guidelines, that this time Brussels will focus only on the single rail ticket, without insisting further on multimodal exchanges.
