Rail holidays are in demand, but outdated ticketing systems hold back independent travellers

How to streamline passenger rail travel across Europe

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We know there is a problem with rail ticketing in the EU - anyone who has ever tried to book trains cross-border has encountered the issues. If you can find the trains you want, you often cannot get p...

"Cross-border train travel is still too difficult for many citizens" were the words in Ursula von der Leyen's political guidelines for the 2024-2029 European Commission (PDF here). The document conti...

Last summer I faced a peculiar conundrum: the train I wanted to take from Trondheim to Oslo in Norway was already sold out before tickets for the train from Boden in Sweden to Narvik in Norway, an ear...

Les plateformes de distribution en ligne de billets de train estiment que ce n'est pas "la bonne solution" et plaident pour d'autres options. Pourtant, un amendement adopté en commission au Sénat pour...

I was commissioned by Jakop Dalunde, MEP from Miljöpartiet de gröna (Greens/EFA), to write a report about the ongoing challenges to fix multimodal and especially railway ticketing problems EU-wide. T...

Berlin, 25th September 2025 – This week, in its newly published document “Key Points for the Reform of Deutsche Bahn” (i.e. reform of the state-owned rail incumbent DB), the German Federal Ministry of...

According to the results of the Eurobarometer survey released last week, almost 6 out of 10 EU citizens who never or rarely combine rail journeys with different operators gave startling reasons that c...

It has been kicking off in the French Senate in the past few days on the topic of railway ticketing. The Senate wants to force SNCF Connect, the French state incumbent railway's ticketing platform, to sell tickets for trains run by SNCF's competitors on French routes - such as Trenitalia, Renfe and European Sleeper. Senator Franck Dhersin (centre right - HOR) even went as far as to brand SNCF's attitude to the Senate's work as disgraceful: Given the SDBTR Regulation that is to be proposed by the European Commission next month is _also_ going to try to unpack this topic, these discussions in the Senate foreshadow EU level battles to come. But let's take a step back from the Senator's emotive language and ask: should SNCF Connect even be forced to sell a competitor's tickets? But to answer that, the core point is this: customers need a place or, better still, place**s** where they can compare all the offers of all operators, and internationally as well as nationally. Those places could be incumbents' platforms like SNCF Connect or DB Navigator, or could be third party platforms like Trainline or Railfinder. I really do not mind. The only thing that matters is that a customer can compare all the offers, and tickets can be purchased for the best price. The problem is that while SNCF is resisting the Senate's efforts to force it to sell rival firms' tickets, it is _also_ working against the alternative - namely allowing anyone else to build comparison platforms. SNCF is steadily reducing the commission it will pay to third parties that re-sell its tickets - this commission has dropped from 2.9% in 2024 to 2.7% from mid 2026, barely enough for third party platforms to cover their credit card fees. Given the long standing nightmares that is SNCF Connect's interface, I would genuinely appreciate there being alternatives where I could book any rail ticket in France. And that, ultimately, is why I would favour solving this by addressing the level of commission SNCF (and indeed anyone else) will pay to third parties - because then multiple different ticketing platforms can develop. That strikes me as a better way of solving this problem than imposing an obligation on SNCF Connect. But what ultimately is the _honte_ , the disgrace, here, is that SNCF is currently trying to have it both ways - it is against having to sell other operators' tickets and it is also reducing commissions paid to third parties. That position is obviously untenable.

Non paper van Nederland. Het non paper gaat over het assessment van de Europese Commissie over de Multimodal Digital Mobility Services (MDMS)en de Single Digital Booking and Ticketing Regulation (SDBTR). Non paper by the Netherlands as informal contribution to the EC’s ongoing Impact Assessment