The European Commission has proposed new rules to make seamless travel across Europe a reality. The three proposals adopted today simplify planning and booking for regional, long-distance and cross-border travel, particularly for rail journeys involving multiple operators, and ensure better protection for rail passengers for the entire journey.
At present, comparing all available travel options and identifying the most sustainable choices, especially for cross-border travel, remains difficult for passengers in the EU; especially for rail tickets. Many passengers encounter obstacles when combining different transport services. Booking multiple-leg train journeys involving tickets from different companies can be complex, largely due to fragmented booking systems and the very strong market presence of certain rail companies. Passenger protection is limited on rail journeys involving multiple tickets by different rail operators.
Today's proposals address these obstacles, delivering on President Ursula von der Leyen's political guidelines . To create a smoother travel experience for passengers and advance the EU's climate objectives, the Commission proposes measures enabling single-ticket bookings across multiple rail operators, making the rail market more transparent and accessible. Passengers will be able to find, compare and purchase services combined from different rail operators into one single ticket, which can be bought in one transaction on a ticketing platform of their choice. This can be an independent platform, or the rail operator's ticketing service.
In the event of missed connections during multi-operator rail journeys, passengers with a single ticket will benefit from new, full passenger rights protection, including assistance, rerouting, reimbursement and compensation.
The Commission also introduces new obligations for ticketing platforms and operators to ensure fair access to selling tickets and the neutral presentation of travel options. Platforms will be required to display offers in a neutral way, including sorting by greenhouse gas emissions where feasible. Rules will ensure that all transport operators can conclude fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory commercial agreements with ticketing platforms, and vice versa.
Next steps
Following today's announcement, the Commission will submit the proposed regulations to the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament for consideration under the ordinary legislative procedure.
To develop seamless booking and ticketing systems, Member States must also speed up implementation of the Intelligent Transport Systems Directive's rules on sharing multimodal transport data on national access points.
Background
A recent Eurobarometer survey revealed strong public demand for seamless travel solutions and reliable online booking systems. Today's proposals aim to make it easier for passengers to book rail journeys across borders and operators.
In her political guidelines , President von der Leyen already set out a vision in which Europeans can buy one single ticket on one single platform and get passengers' rights for their whole trip. This ambition was reaffirmed in her mission letter to Commissioner for Sustainable Transport and Tourism, Apostolos Tzitzikostas, and is being delivered through today's package for the rail sector.
The proposals also advance the EU's action plan to boost long-distance and cross-border rail and the plan on Connecting Europe through high-speed rail .
