The European High Speed Rail Plan

The European Commission unveiled its most ambitious high-speed rail plan to connect Europe in a unified high speed rail system by 2040. The most shared map of this plan highlights the proposed significantly shortened travel times between European capitals, and the inclusion of the long-awaited Rail Baltica project in the north and the high-speed connection of the Iberian Peninsula (the Lisbon – Madrid – Paris corridor) to the south. However, the entire plan goes into a lot more detail, and presents a complete European solution, going beyond the borders of the EU today.

High-speed rail (HSR) has many definitions around the world, the European Commission defined HSR lines as lines that are either

• specially built for speeds of 250km/h or greater, or
• existing lines that have been upgraded to speeds of 200km/h or greater,
• excluding lines through dense urban areas, or where the topography requires slower speeds due to safety measures.

All the lines outlined in the Commission’s HSR plan will meet these criteria.

The plan for 2040 includes all lines planned and follows the structure of previously planned corridors. Interestingly enough, it also includes a network strategy for the Western Balkan Six (WB6) and Moldova and Ukraine, projecting their involvement in the HSR network should they join the EU. These countries are already part of the Commission’s Trans European Transport Network (TEN-T), on which the HSR Plan is based, and have completed first projects on their respective TEN-T Corridors.

The plan doesn’t yet include provisions on standardising the passenger experience or operations on the network. While the plan states that the infrastructure operators of member states will be legally required to reserve capacity for cross-border operations, it remains unclear on whether the entire network will be open access. Private operators could still face administrative challenges in obtaining a permit to operate on the network. Furthermore, no standardised European ticketing procedure, or the publication of ticketing data, is foreseen by the plan.

To further strengthen the powers of the European network, the Commission has announced that the powers of the European Rail Agency (ERA) will be revised in 2026, enabling the ERA to issue certifications more easily and lessen the burden on national administrations. At the same time national railway agencies will have to yield some of their competences to the ERA in order to make these reforms possible.

A scoreboard will be put into place to measure the progress made within EU member states (and future members), tracking the completion of projects until 2040. Whether or not this will materialise remains to be seen, and it is likely that timeline implementation will not just vary between member states, but also between lines of different topographies within member states and the EU as a whole.

Stefan Radaković

Media:

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Selected routes from the High Speed Rail Plan, travel times as of publicly available schedule data in April 2025; credit: European Comission

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All routes from the High Speed Rail Plan, proposed network for 2040 including all new EU members, currently enjoying candidacy status; credit: European Commission