Bulgaria launches Alstom fleet after race to meet EU funding deadline

BULGARIA: State-owned operator BDZ has put its first Alstom Coradia Stream EMUs into regular passenger service, less than three weeks after introducing its new Škoda RegioPanter fleet. The twin launches follow a race to meet the EU Recovery & Resilience Facility’s funding deadline and mark Bulgaria’s first new passenger fleets in around two decades.

Commercial operation of the Alstom fleet began on September 1, with the first two trains initially deployed on four routes: Plovdiv – Svilengrad near the Turkish border, Plovdiv – Asenovgrad in southern Bulgaria, Svilengrad – Sofia, and Sofia – Pernik southwest of the capital. Further routes are to be added as more trains are commissioned.

The trains form part of a 35-unit order placed by the Ministry of Transport & Communications with the BULEMU consortium of Alstom and Bulgarian rolling stock maintenance company RVP Invest. A batch of 12 trains had been delivered to Bulgaria by late August, with the remaining 23 due to be ready for delivery by April 2027.

The Alstom fleet follows the introduction of the first Škoda RegioPanter EMUs on August 14, bringing two major new passenger fleets into service within 18 days as the government accelerates a long-delayed renewal of BDZ’s rolling stock.

Presenting the first Alstom EMU in Sofia on August 25, Transport Minister Georgi Peev said the Alstom and Škoda fleets represented Bulgaria’s first deliveries of new passenger trains in around 20 years. ‘With funding secured, we have the opportunity to purchase additional trains, which will accelerate the rolling stock modernisation programme. Our team is working around the clock to ensure that the trains are delivered, tested and certified on schedule’, he said.

Coradia Stream fleet

The 160 km/h Coradia Stream trainsets comprise six cars with 325 seats, a fully low-floor interior and ETCS onboard equipment. They are intended for inter-regional and inter-city services, with Peev suggesting that they could be used in future on the long-distance Sofia – Burgas route to the Black Sea coast.

The final contract was finalised at €720m, including €452m for the trains and €268m for 15 years of maintenance. RVP Invest is to provide a purpose-built maintenance facility in Bulgaria, where Alstom said around 50 local engineers and other staff would be responsible for maintaining the fleet.

Tender shake-up

The 35-train procurement was originally intended to be financed entirely through Bulgaria’s Recovery & Resilience Plan, the national programme for spending its share of the EU’s post-pandemic recovery fund. Stadler Polska was selected in June 2024 with a €328·5m offer and a 28-month delivery programme. However, it withdrew the following month after concluding that delays to the procurement would make the timetable impossible to meet.

The ministry then turned to second-ranked Pesa, but the Polish manufacturer’s bid was later excluded after evaluators concluded that it had not demonstrated how certification and delivery could be completed within the required timeframe. That left the Alstom-led BULEMU consortium as the successful bidder, despite its offer being around 37% higher than Stadler’s earlier bid.

The government justified the decision at the time by saying that Alstom was the only remaining bidder to demonstrate that it could meet the required delivery timetable; Former Transport Minister Grozdan Karadzhov subsequently also defended the higher price on the basis of the greater capacity offered by the Alstom trains. The final contract was signed in April 2025.

Race to meet the RRF deadline

The emphasis on deliverability was part of the pressure created by the Recovery & Resilience Facility’s hard August 31 2026 deadline. By the time the Alstom contract was signed in 2025, it was clear that all 35 trains could not be delivered in time, putting the EU funding earmarked for the procurement at risk. Karadzhov had said at one point that the order had appeared ‘absolutely lost’, as Bulgaria had little prospect of financing the trains outside the Recovery Plan.

In a bid to address the issue, Alstom offered to reorganise its production and supply chains so that 12 of the 35 trains would reach Bulgaria by the deadline, later describing the first as having been ‘delivered in record time’. The Bulgarian government then secured European Commission agreement for that tranche to remain fully RRF-funded despite the overall order extending beyond August 31. Bulgaria remains committed to buying the other 23, but their financing has yet to be secured, with the government seeking to fund them through the EU-backed Social Climate Plan.

At the Alstom presentation, Deputy Prime Minister Atanas Pekanov said Bulgaria expected around €3bn under the plan, ‘with a significant proportion of the funding to be directed towards transport and improving energy efficiency’.

‘Far from sufficient’

Together, the Škoda and Alstom orders will provide Bulgaria with 60 new trainsets, a significant renewal for a fleet in which much of the existing rolling stock is more than 40 years old. The current Transport Minister, however, has said that a further 280–300 passenger coaches are required to meet national needs, while infrastructure remains a major constraint, with nearly 50% of the national rail network subject to temporary or permanent speed restrictions.

‘I would like to emphasise once again that the trains entering service today are far from sufficient to provide a comprehensive, high-quality service’, Peev said, adding that the government would seek longer-term EU funding in Brussels to turn the current burst of fleet renewal into a sustained programme.