On a morning in July, the limits of European integration are revealed on the ICE 16 from Cologne to Brussels. The conductor reports a few minutes after departure. “Unfortunately, I have bad news,” he announces over the loudspeaker, “our software is doing faxes today.” The train can’t make it from Germany to Belgium, says the man, because certain systems are “just incompatible”. The journey will end in Aachen.
Traveling by train across Europe can be tricky. Not just because the technology fails from time to time. The problems usually start with the booking. After 72 years of European integration, eight major international treaties and thousands of EU Commission regulations, there is hardly any progress in one area: anyone who wants to buy a train ticket abroad often fails.
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Booking some routes works well, such as Cologne-Brussels. And demand is high: last year around 21 million people crossed the German border by train – more than ever before. But most of these trips led to our direct neighbors.
Because as soon as more than one border has to be crossed, it gets complicated for customers. Berlin-Madrid? “No sale possible,” says Deutsche Bahn’s website. Hamburg-Stockholm? “Price information is not available”. Munich-Sofia? The same. Sometimes trips abroad cannot be booked at all, sometimes the costs are not displayed, sometimes you can only select sections of the route and have to find connections on the portals of Bulgarian, Swedish or Spanish train operators.
Railways refuse
The problem: many national railways do not share their data, such as prices, delays, cancellations or platform changes, with each other. And some don’t want to work with independent internet platforms that sell tickets for international train travel – similar to what Skyscanner and Opodo do for flights, for example. There have been some such providers for years, such as Trainline, Omio and Rail Europe.
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All this is very inconvenient for travelers. But there is more to it than that. The fragmentation of Europe’s rail network – that patchwork of dozens of companies sealing off their booking systems and guarding their data – is hampering major societal projects.
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The EU Commission and its German boss Ursula von der Leyen want to transform Europe into the world‘s first climate-neutral continent by 2050. But how is that supposed to work if trains can only be booked with a great deal of effort – and flights within a few minutes?
Traffic causes a quarter of European CO₂ emissions. Cars, trucks and planes put more than 800 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. The Commission thinks that at least part of this can be saved if more people travel abroad by train.
As early as the end of 2020, Brussels promised to make exactly that easier. The Commissioner for Transport, Adina Vălean from Romania, presented a “strategy for sustainable and intelligent mobility”. It was 35 pages of beautiful words: There was talk of “cheap and clean transport alternatives” and a “fair and digital future”. Only: action did not follow. After the summer break, Vălean finally wants to enshrine her strategy in law.
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It’s high time for that, says Anna Deparnay-Grunenberg, member of the Green Party in the European Parliament and member of the Transport Committee. “Anyone who wants to book trains abroad online often has to call up the websites of the individual railway companies and look for everything, usually in a foreign language,” she says in an interview with WELT AM SONNTAG. The same of a brain teaser. “The EU is considered to be over-regulated,” says Deparnay-Grunenberg, “but tariff confusion reigns in rail transport.”
The Green politician wants to strengthen “pan-European booking platforms”, i.e. offers such as Trainline, Omio and Rail Europe. Deparnay-Grunenberg herself often travels by train through Europe, she works in Germany and Belgium and has family in France and Switzerland. “It’s unfair,” she says, “that flights are much easier to book than trains.” Airlines have long shared data with platforms like Skyscanner and Opodo, where customers can compare prices and buy tickets to destinations around the world. The railway companies, on the other hand, are against something like that, criticizes Deparnay-Grunenberg.
behind-the-scenes pressure
“They fear losing market share and not being able to access special offers as freely as before,” she says. It is unclear whether the Commission’s draft law will force companies to release their data. In any case, it would be a great relief for passengers.
When asked by this newspaper, the Commission declined to comment on its plans. Otherwise, the authority often presents itself as a champion of the rights of European consumers. But she hesitates on this subject. Presumably, so is heard in Brussels, because the national train operators are exerting pressure behind the scenes.
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Deutsche Bahn defends itself against the criticism. Great importance is attached to working with service providers such as Trainline, as certain markets can be better reached together, says a spokesman. The company cooperates with the platforms on the basis of “fair conditions” and provides them with “all the necessary information”. The spokesman emphasizes that Deutsche Bahn is already offering end-to-end tickets to destinations in 15 European countries.
Nevertheless, the platforms hope that the European Commission will intervene. “Brussels must finally tackle the matter,” says Alexander Ernert from the Trainline portal. “We need a legal basis in the EU.” Trainline sells tickets for 270 train and bus companies in 45 European countries. You can order in 14 languages and pay in ten currencies.
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3 months after introduction
Trainline doesn’t have it easy. Not only are some national train operators withholding data, but they don’t want to pay the platform a commission on tickets sold. “In many countries,” says Ernert, “it’s getting better now.” He mentions Italy, for example.
And in the Federal Republic? “Deutsche Bahn is blocking the project,” says Ernert. No other train operator is putting up so much resistance to independent booking platforms at national and European level. One reason for this could be that there is little competition on the rails in this country.
In Spain, for example, four companies operate express trains. DB has a dominant position in Germany. And, Ernert believes, she is not very interested in selling tickets through third-party portals, even if it would make life easier for many customers.
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This is where you will find third-party content
In order to display embedded content, your revocable consent to the transmission and processing of personal data is required, since the providers of the embedded content as third-party providers require this consent [In diesem Zusammenhang können auch Nutzungsprofile (u.a. auf Basis von Cookie-IDs) gebildet und angereichert werden, auch außerhalb des EWR]. By setting the switch to “on”, you agree to this (which can be revoked at any time). This also includes your consent to the transfer of certain personal data to third countries, including the USA, in accordance with Art. 49 (1) (a) GDPR. You can find more information about this. You can withdraw your consent at any time via the switch and via privacy at the bottom of the page.