In her working plan accompanying her application speech in front of the EU Parliament Commission, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen from Germany did not really raise high ambitions about progress in transport of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in general or improvements of the European railway network in particular, but one promise was clearly made: single-ticket rail travel across the continent. Night train advocacy group Back-on-Track Europe is not impressed.

“We will propose a Single Digital Booking and Ticketing Regulation, to ensure that Europeans can buy one single ticket on one single platform and get passengers’ rights for their whole trip”, Ursula von der Leyen states in ‘Europe’s Choice. Political Guidelines for the Next European Commission 2024−2029‘ on page 9.

This is not the first attempt by her European Commission to present a regulation (i.e. a law that is binding for all member states) to solve this problem. 

Previous Commission

In 2023, Commissioner Adina Vălean from Romania announced a draft ‘Multimodal Digital Mobility Services Regulation‘ (MDMS), which then disappeared from her agenda without further comment. 

Presumably, the goal of multimodality to also regulate ferries and local transport (among other things) was set too high. The fact that the new attempt lowered the threshold to regulate only rail transport was somewhat good news, as rail transport can fall back on ready-made standards such as NetEX for train data and Open Sales and Distribution Model (OSDM) for sales processes. 

This would make implementation less complex and increase the likelihood that it will take place in the foreseeable future.

Von der Leyen’s promise was written in the briefing paper for the appointed Commissioner for Transport, Apostolos Tzitzikostas from Greece, and it was repeated by him in his presentation and fixed to a delivery date.

“I will present to you in the first year of my mandate a proposal for a Single Digital Booking and Ticketing Regulation”, Apostolos Tzitzikostas said in his hearing on 4 November 2024.

Plan removed

“These promises have not been kept. On 12 February 2025, the EU Commission presented its work plan for 2025, in which this promise was shamelessly removed from the EU’s actual work plan”, Back-on-Track complains.

“Ambitions in rail transport have been reduced to the pursuit of two proposals to re-regulate passenger rights from 2023, which can still be found as No. 14 and 15 in Annex 3 of the Agenda.”

“The only new measures announced in the area of transport are the announcement of a non-legislative transport investment plan to improve the provision of a refuelling and recharging structure. The new Commission wants to limit itself to making road and air transport more sustainable rather than making rail more attractive. At least for the next year. That’s a very, very bad start.”

How to get more nigh trains

Easing the purchase of international train tickets is one of the six core strategies we identified in Back-on-Track’s position paper ‘How to get more night trains‘. 

“The other five obstacles are even more complicated to remove. So if the European Union fails on this task, the likelihood that more obstacles might be removed is fading away.

We will not give in on this demand and we will try mobilize together with our allies to get this task back on the agenda.”

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