Want to book one ticket from Brussels to Lisbon without juggling five platforms? Right now, it is not possible: passengers must hunt for connections themselves and hope someone takes responsibility if a journey falls apart. Brussels wants that to change.
The frustration is familiar to anyone who has tried to book a cross-border train journey in Europe. The European Commission wants to fix it. This week, it defended a new passenger package before the European Parliament’s transport committee (TRAN), calling it a realistic way to make rail and multimodal travel easier to book, compare and protect.
The package has three parts: a regulation on multimodal booking, a regulation on rail ticketing for international journeys, and a regulation on passenger rights when travellers use a single ticket for the whole trip. Together, they are meant to work as a single system rather than three separate fixes.
Where today’s booking falls short
Magda Kopczyńska, Director-General for Mobility and Transport (DG MOVE), told MEPs that passengers still lack a single platform to compare and choose between transport modes. Travellers often cannot tell which route produces the lowest carbon emissions, she said, and smaller transport operators may struggle to get fair access to the major booking sites that dominate the market.
The multimodal booking regulation targets both business-to-business and business-to-consumer platforms selling long-distance transport. The largest of these platforms would face new notification and fairness rules governing their commercial agreements with suppliers and customers.
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What we have tried to do with the regulation is to find ways of addressing that in a minimal necessary way. — Magda Kopczyńska, Director-General for Mobility and Transport, European Commission
For consumers, the central promise is neutral ranking: offers should be shown based on what suits the traveller, not what earns the platform the most. As Kopczyńska put it, “what we have tried to do with the regulation is to find ways of addressing that in a minimal necessary way.” Emission data could also appear where operators choose to provide it.
Rail’s special case
Rail gets its own regulation because the Commission sees it as a special case. Passengers need to combine timetables from different operators and book smoothly across them. Today, Kopczyńska said, that is simply not possible.
Rail also faces less competition than other transport sectors. Public service obligations cover around 60 per cent of EU passenger rail services, and established operators own most of the major ticketing portals. That combination creates a risk: a dominant operator could use its position to squeeze out rivals in the ticket market.
The new rules would force operators to strike commercial agreements with any platform that wants to sell their tickets. “Indispensable” platforms owned by dominant operators would have to show all rail services in any member state where their parent company holds real market power. Rail tickets would also need to go on sale at least five months in advance.
One journey, one clear set of rights
The third part of the package covers passenger rights. Right now, a delay or cancellation by one railway operator can leave passengers stranded and unprotected if they miss a connection with another operator.
The Commission wants to close that gap. Passengers travelling on a single ticket for the whole journey would be fully covered if they miss a connection through no fault of their own. They would get rerouting, a refund, compensation and assistance.
Liability would fall on whichever railway undertaking caused the disruption. The Commission also wants to stop platforms from artificially splitting journeys to dodge passenger rights obligations, and to set minimum connection times so operators cannot sell passengers unrealistic itineraries.
MEPs welcome ambition but question risks
MEPs backed the package but raised concerns about competition, platform power, liability and ticket prices. Several also questioned whether the rules go far enough.
A passenger wants to move from point A to point B, so this whole proposal: one trip, one booking, one ticket, meets citizens’ expectations. — MEP Dariusz Joński (EPP/POL)
Johan Danielsson (S&D/SWE) agreed, arguing train travel between European countries should be as easy to book as a flight. Passengers, he added, should not need to know the contractual arrangements between operators and platforms.
Other MEPs worried the legislation could create new ‘digital gatekeepers’ and hand dominant platforms too much power over rail distribution. Some also feared that more competition could cut investment or pile extra burdens on operators. Several questioned the passenger rights proposal directly: a 12-hour limit, they warned, would leave passengers on longer transborder routes without compensation.
Voluntary deals failed
Responding to MEPs, Kopczyńska said the Commission’s focus is the passenger and the consumer. The package is designed to give travellers better access to tickets, better information, and certainty that their rights are protected when they travel by rail on a single ticket, she said.
She rejected the idea that voluntary industry agreements are enough. “If the agreements worked, if they covered all operators, we wouldn’t need to legislate,” she said. “Those agreements don’t work, hence the proposal.”
Kopczyńska said the Commission does not want operators to cooperate instead of competing. Competition can widen choice and bring prices down, she argued, as long as everyone gets a fair chance to compete. The Commission is not building a single European ticketing layer to duplicate what already exists, she added. Instead, it wants to build on existing platforms, adding obligations only where the market has failed to deliver.
Not just high speed rail
The Commission stressed the package covers more than high-speed rail. Regional and local trains also help improve Europe’s connectivity, Kopczyńska said. Urban rail was left out, since it behaves differently to long-distance services and mostly serves people commuting to and from work.
Several related railway initiatives accompany the package: investment in rail infrastructure, a new high-speed rail action plan, rules on rail capacity, and the future work programme of the European Union Agency for Railways and train drivers. The Irish Presidency wants the Council to reach a general approach by the end of the year, the Commission said.
The work now shifts to Parliament, which must negotiate the three legislative files. MEPs broadly support the objective. Whether the rules can genuinely make cross-border rail easier is still up for debate.
