The European Commission has proposed a new set of rules that aim to enable seamless travel across Europe.
A set of three proposals will simplify planning and booking for regional, long-distance and cross-border travel – particularly for rail journeys involving multiple operators, as well as ensure better protection for rail passengers for the entire journey.
The rules aim to simply rail travel across Europe
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Currently, comparing all available travel options and identifying sustainable choices must be done by combining and comparing different transport services, with the booking of multi-leg train journeys requiring moving between different operators and companies. As a result, passenger protection is limited on rail journeys involving multiple tickets by different rail operators.
New proposals aim to address this by enabling single-ticket bookings across multiple rail operators, enabling a more transparent and accessible rail market. If adopted, passengers would be able to find, compare and purchase services combined from different rail operators in one single ticket, which would be offered as one transaction on a ticketing platform of their choice – be it an independent platform or the rail operator’s ticketing service.
In the event of any missed connections during multi-operator rail journeys, passengers in possession of a single ticket will be able to take advantage of new, full passenger rights protection, including assistance, rerouting, reimbursement and compensation.
The Commission is also intending to introduce new obligations for ticketing platforms and operators to ensure fair access to the selling of tickets, as well as the neutral presentation of travel options. Platforms would henceforth be required to display offers in a neutral way, including sorting by greenhouse gas emissions wherever feasible.
Additionally, the Commission has adopted an Implementation Report on the Rail Passenger Rights Regulation, which highlights progress made since June 2023. The report shows that Member States have strengthened passenger protections, including clearer rules on bicycle carriage and better passenger information, whilst reducing exemptions. It also points to remaining challenges, notably the limited availability of through-tickets for cross-border journeys involving multiple operators.
Following this announcement, the Commission is set to submit the proposed regulations to the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament for consideration under the ordinary legislative procedure.