DB Group

The European Greening Transport Package

By 2050, greenhouse gas emissions from transport are to be reduced by 90% compared with 1990. To this end, on July 11, 2023, the European Commission presented a comprehensive package of measures. The following proposals are directly relevant for rail transport:

• more efficient capacity management in cross-border rail transport,
• the revision of the directive on maximum permitted dimensions and weights in road freight transport, and
• a proposal for the standardized calculation of transport-related greenhouse gas emissions.

The proposal for revision of the Combined Transport Directive was adopted in a second step on November 7, 2023. The European Commission’s legislative proposals are currently being discussed further by the Council and the European Parliament. The legislative procedures are not expected to be completed until 2025.

Passenger transport

Legislative proposal for Single Digital Booking and Ticketing Regulation

The new EU Transport Commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas announced on November 4, 2024, that he would present a Single Digital Booking and Ticketing Regulation draft in 2025. The project had already played a prominent role as the only rail policy measure in Ursula von der Leyen’s guidelines for her second term of office in mid-2024. The specific content of the announced legislation is not yet known. The bookability of all cross-border train connections on one or more platforms, without the condition of the existence of commercial agreements, is to be expected as a key point. The new Transport Commissioner has also held out the prospect of a second regulation on multimodality and a possible revision of passenger rights.

Consideration of the Open Sales and Distribution Model sector standard in the TSI TA

The European Commission is currently revising the Technical Specifications for Interoperability of Telematics Applications (TSI TA) together with the European Railway Agency (ERA). The aim is to adopt these at the next meeting of the relevant Member States’ Committee in June 2025. This will also set the course for ticketing, such as the definition of the fare data structure and the interface for booking and paying for international/national tickets, for which the sector has already developed a solution with the Open Sales and Distribution Model (OSDM) interface.

The European Commission has so far declared its opposition to a holistic inclusion of OSDM in the TSI TA and intends to entrust the European standardization body CEN/CENELEC with the task of developing a new standardization interface in the near future.

If OSDM is not or not sufficiently taken into account in the TA TSI, this would mean that the sector would have to deal with new technical regulation in the long term (2028 to 2029) once OSDM has been fully implemented (by 2025).

Proposals for multimodal passenger rights and to strengthen the rights of customers

On November 29, 2023, the European Commission introduced the Passenger Mobility Package. It includes, among other things, proposals for a new regulation on multimodal passenger rights and a proposal to amend the European passenger rights regulations to strengthen the rights of customers. The Commission believes that passenger rights in the EU should be worded more clearly for both transport companies and passengers and that their implementation should be improved. Moreover, there is no EU legislation that guarantees the rights of passengers who combine different means of transport. In its proposal, the Commission now provides for new liability, particularly for continuous multimodal transport contracts, for example in the event of a loss of connection between two means of transport. The tightening of the requirements for continuous journeys could lead to such services being restricted in future. For DB Group, the new multimodal passenger rights regulation could have a particular impact on cooperation with airlines. The regulation amending the European passenger rights regulations increases the documentation requirements when concluding transport contracts and introduces a monitoring system for the fulfillment of passenger law requirements. The Council adopted a general approach to the proposals on December 5, 2024.

Infrastructure

Revision of the regulation on EU guidelines for the development of a trans-European transport network

On December 14, 2021, the European Commission presented a proposal to revise the Regulation on guidelines for the development of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T network). The objective is to achieve faster completion of the multimodal TEN-T core network by 2030 and the TEN-T total network by 2050. The new regulation was published in the Official Journal of the European Union on June 28, 2024, and entered into force on July 18, 2024. The new regulation confirms the proposed new network design with the target horizons of 2030 (core network), 2040 (newly introduced expanded core network) and 2050 (total network). To ensure timely completion, implementation requirements are planned for the most important cross-border sections and other specific national sections along the European transport corridors. Among other things, the agreed requirements include the introduction of the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) and the shutdown of Class B train protection systems, minimum line speeds of 160 km/h for passenger trains and better integration of ports, airports and multimodal freight terminals into the TEN-T network. Operational requirements were adopted for rail freight transport, for example for border clearance times.