One journey, one ticket, full rights: Commission simplifies Europe-wide journey reserving and prepare journey

The European Commission has proposed new guidelines to make seamless journey throughout Europe a actuality. The three proposals adopted at the moment simplify planning and reserving for regional, long-distance and cross-border journey, notably for rail journeys involving a number of operators, and guarantee higher safety for rail passengers for the complete journey.

At current, evaluating all obtainable journey choices and figuring out essentially the most sustainable decisions, particularly for cross-border journey, stays troublesome for passengers within the EU; particularly for rail tickets. Many passengers encounter obstacles when combining completely different transport companies. Booking multipleleg prepare journeys involving tickets from completely different corporations may be complicated, largely because of fragmented reserving techniques and the very sturdy market presence of sure rail corporations. Passenger safety is restricted on rail journeys involving a number of tickets by completely different rail operators.

Today’s proposals deal with these obstacles, delivering on President Ursula von der Leyen‘s political guidelines. To create a smoother journey expertise for passengers and advance the EU’s local weather targets, the Commission proposes measures enabling single-ticket bookings throughout a number of rail operators, making the rail market extra clear and accessible. Passengers will have the ability to discover, examine and buy companies mixed from completely different rail operators into one single ticket, which may be purchased in a single transaction on a ticketing platform of their selection. This may be an impartial platform, or the rail operator’s ticketing service.

In the occasion of missed connections throughout multi-operator rail journeys, passengers with a single ticket will profit from new, full passenger rights safety, together with help, rerouting, reimbursement and compensation.

The Commission additionally introduces new obligations for ticketing platforms and operators to make sure honest entry to promoting tickets and the impartial presentation of journey choices. Platforms shall be required to show affords in a impartial approach, together with sorting by greenhouse gasoline emissions the place possible. Rules will be sure that all transport operators can conclude honest, affordable and non-discriminatory industrial agreements with ticketing platforms, and vice versa.

The Commission additionally adopted at the moment an Implementation Report on the Rail Passenger Rights Regulation, highlighting progress since June 2023. The report exhibits that Member States have strengthened passenger protections, together with clearer guidelines on bicycle carriage and higher passenger data, whereas decreasing exemptions. It additionally factors to remaining challenges, notably the restricted availability of through-tickets for cross-border journeys involving a number of operators.

Next steps

Following at the moment’s announcement, the Commission will submit the proposed laws to the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament for consideration below the peculiar legislative process.

To develop seamless reserving and ticketing techniques, Member States should additionally pace up implementation of the Intelligent Transport Systems Directive’s guidelines on sharing multimodal transport information on nationwide entry factors.

Background

A latest Eurobarometer survey revealed sturdy public demand for seamless journey options and dependable on-line reserving techniques. Today’s proposals goal to make it simpler for passengers to guide rail journeys throughout borders and operators.

In her political guidelines, President von der Leyen already set out a imaginative and prescient during which Europeans can purchase one single ticket on one single platform and get passengers’ rights for his or her complete journey. This ambition was reaffirmed in her mission letter to Commissioner for Sustainable Transport and Tourism, Apostolos Tzitzikostas, and is being delivered by at the moment’s bundle for the rail sector.

The proposals additionally advance the EU’s motion plan to spice up long-distance and cross-border rail and the plan on Connecting Europe by high-speed rail.

For extra data

The Passenger Package

Legal paperwork

Multimodal reserving

Rail ticketing

Protection of passengers with single tickets

The implementation and outcomes of Regulation (EU) 2021/782 on rail passengers’ rights and obligations