Debate: Stocktaking of the European Year of Rail
Date: WEDNESDAY, 15 DECEMBER 2021
Speaker: Adina-Ioana Vălean
Language: EN

As the end of the European Year of Rail is approaching, I can confidently say that there is a strong appetite for rail in Europe. Despite the COVID—19 pandemic, the European Year of Rail has been welcomed with great enthusiasm by the sector and beyond. So far, we have received more than 350 proposals for events and activities. The Connecting Europe Express, a dedicated train that travelled across Europe in September and October, visiting 26 countries in 36 days, has been one of the main highlights of the year. It truly lived up to its name, as it brought together national, regional and local authorities, society at large and the rail sector. It encouraged more than 40 partners from the sector to join forces to set up an unprecedented pan—European rail service, clearly showing that Europe is stronger together. At every one of the more than 200 stops along the journey, we were welcomed with great enthusiasm by national, regional, local authorities, stakeholders and citizens, including some of you. We also collected one or more flags at each of these stops, which means that by the moment we reached our end destination in Paris, we had gathered more than 200 flags. So what a beautiful way to symbolise the unifying power of railways in Europe. However, the Connecting Europe Express also illustrated very well the many obstacles rail still faces and needs to overcome to become the preferred mode of transport. Ideally, the Connecting Europe Express should have been one single train, but the lack of interoperability between some parts of the European network meant that we had to have three different trains to fit the different gauges used in Europe. And this is only one part of the story, as our journey across Europe highlighted many other issues that we still need to address to fully benefit from rail’s sustainability potential. So, my takeaway from the Year of Rail is that we need more and better rail. As to make rail more attractive, we need to make rail more reliable, flexible and cost—effective, which is not possible without further innovation and digitalisation. I’m happy, therefore, that in November, the Council adopted the regulation establishing Europe’s Rail Joint Undertaking, the successor of Shift2Rail. At EU level, the lessons learned from the Connecting Europe Express have already fed into our proposals to boost the rail sector. Yesterday, we presented the action plan to boost passenger rail services. This plan builds on efforts by Member States to make key connections between cities faster, through better managing infrastructure capacity, coordinating timetables, pooling locomotives, coaches and wagons, and improving infrastructure to make new train services possible. Yesterday, in the same package, we also adopted a proposal for the revision of the TEN-T guidelines and the Rail Freight Corridors Regulation. Our proposal aims to ensure a stronger link between good infrastructure and good capacity, creating true European transport corridors for rail. In the TEN-T revision, we also build in stronger coordination of investments and the removal of operational obstacles for both rail freight and passengers. And we will continue focusing on rail in our future works, as we will be preparing the Green Freight package for the end of 2022, in which rail will also play a prominent role. It will be our contribution to make sure that the momentum continues beyond the European Year of Rail. So thank you very much for your attention and your support during this year full of events.