 Good afternoon. Welcome to this Investigate Europe webinar on the state of play of European trains. I'm Maria Maggiore. I work for this consortium of journalists. We have just published a huge investigation on trains conducted in 14 countries. We try to understand the why trains clearly climate friends, but today only 6% of passengers and only 18% of freight use the trains. They are responsible for this failure. There are difficulties. There are obstacles. There is probably a new renaissance with the climate emergency. So we will speak about all that. I'm proud of a very good panel this afternoon. So let me introduce Christian Schmid. You are land director at the European Commission. Good afternoon. And then I am sure you will receive a lot of questions today. For instance, by John Worth, train expert, a strong campaigner for night trains and many other things. John, who is not in Budapest as somebody could think, but is somewhere near a station because he was about to miss this webinar because of train connections. And then I welcome Pio Guido, from the European Railway Agency, ERA. And finally, Tom Buchholt, sorry for my pronunciation, from Flix Mobility, which includes, of course, the very well-known bus company, Flix Bus. And we are waiting for Tobias Halle from the German branch of Friday for Future. He is lost somewhere. So thank you for coming. I have many questions, but as I said before starting, I also encourage you to speak together. You can raise hands or just join. We jump in the conversation and the same you, public from home, you can send your questions here. And the chat we have opened question and answers. So not the chat of Zoom, but the special chat. We will answer to you either in written either. I will try to pick up some questions during the debate. But first, before starting, I propose to watch the short video teaser we always prepare to introduce our investigations, which is always done by our Greek team. Very good. So let's have a look together. 2021 was dubbed the European Year of Rail as part of the EU's efforts to tackle the climate crisis. To mark the moment, the Commission launched the Connecting Europe Express, a train that would crisscross 26 countries and showcase the unifying force of rail. Unifying force? During its journey, the Connecting Europe Express had to change locomotives 55 times. Investigate Europe's team of journalists from 14 countries took a ride on the continent's trains to investigate the state of Europe's railways. Paulo left Lisbon at sunrise and arrived in Madrid at night. He had to board four different trains that took 11 hours to cover 600 kilometers. Nico and Lorenzo approached the Brenner tunnel. When completed in 2032, it will be the longest railway tunnel in the world. Yet to date, no one knows who, if anyone will use it. Attila and Anna traveled from Budapest to Belgrade to Paris. A trade route snubbed for decades by the EU, yet now promoted and funded by Beijing. What did they uncover? Railways seemed to be in a worse state than 20 years ago, despite four European Union rail packages. Many domestic networks have shrunk drastically, while international connections have also suffered a big blow. Night trains have almost disappeared. Cross-border online ticketing is often a bad joke. On both domestic and international routes, more than one in two trains is late. So, who killed the train? Was it the forced separation of railway infrastructure from train operations, a rule that exists only in Europe? Was it the privatization and supposed liberalization of the railways? Or on the contrary, was it big players like SNCF and Deutsche Bahn, who stifled competition through protectionism and double standards? Was it national governments, who heavily subsidized aviation, car makers and motorways, while neglecting railways? In This Who Done It, they are all culprits, and not the only ones. To find out who else has blood on their hands, read our investigations by media partners across Europe. So, it resumes a bit all the topics we have covered. I would start with the climate, because climate is the reason why train we can tell between us has come up in the attention of people recently. I wanted to start with Tobias, who is this young activist, closest friends of climate, but he's not there. So, John, I will ask you to help me just remaining on climate for the moment, and then we will tackle, of course, all the other issues. We know that train is the cleanest way of transport. Only 1% of CO2 instead of 71 for roads. So, there is no issue on that, although probably Tom will say something on long distances. I mean, I let you tell that after. So, what is your experience at the same time? Because we saw these activists going to Glasgow. They all wanted to take the train, catch the train, but they had to change. I don't know how many times it was a nightmare for some of them. Can you tell us why we have to take the train today, remaining on this angle of climate? Right. So, what I say, what you say there, I agree with all of that. And indeed, that's been my motivation for being a regular railway passenger over all of these years has been the environmental reasons. And there are two parts to that. Even trains that run currently on diesel, so do emit CO2 emissions, there are potentially easier ways to turn that into electric power through either electrifying the lines or battery power, even hydrogen. So, the environmental basis for rail travel is an extremely solid one. And as well, if you make sure that the electricity that the trains use is generated in a green manner, then that's all the better. The difficulty that all of those climate activists suffered, however, is the moment you start to cross a border on European trains, trying to actually work out first which trains even run, and then second, even how to book tickets for them, is a very difficult task. Because quite often, you can't book a through ticket if it crosses into two or three countries. And that therefore means that you have to buy multiple tickets, which means if the first train gets delayed, you don't necessarily have the rights to take the second or the third train. Now, let's put all of that into context, however, right? There have been videos circulating on Twitter and on Facebook of activists for Norway going to Glasgow by train. Most people are not going to go from Oslo to Glasgow by train in the future. We need to focus on what we can achieve right now. And so, those are journeys which have a daytime trip time of under six hours by train. So those are things like Frankfurt to Brussels or Paris to Marseille trips like that. You get more of those people onto daytime trains. For longer journeys, something like Cologne or what Cologne to Warsaw, you could replace that with a night train. What we are not going to see in the short term is a large percentage of people going from Oslo to Glasgow going by train. It's simply too complicated, too long and too slow. But there are big climate advantages to be had even in those kind of easy wins which railways could achieve on many of the shorter routes. Tom, I would like to enlarge because you, with Flixbus, you found another way to link very long distances by bus. And people, I would say, especially young people, but you will tell me not only I like it, although it still pollutes much more than the train. Do you think the future is by bus or by train? Thanks, Maria. First of all, for the invitation and second of all, for the question. Well, first of all, I think we have to make a very important distinction because it is not road against rail, but the distinction has to be sustainable collective transport, which is bus and rail, I will explain it in a second, against more polluting means of transport, meaning both individual mobility with cars or air travel. There are actually several studies, for example, in Germany by the Federal Environmental Agency, so federal institution, that prove that buses, when it comes to CO2 emissions or external costs, are actually at the same level with long distance trains. So buses and trains are complementary and both are equally needed to offer an attractive choice for passengers. There are rural regions, for example, where it must not necessarily make sense to send a train every hour, but where an offer of a combination between bus and train would make much more sense and does make much more sense, as we can see, with more than 60 million people traveling with our buses and trains in 2019. So especially cross-border, where we see that the infrastructure has been neglected, where we have different standards when it comes to electricity, safety standards, sometimes really artificial standards in member states that are hindering the emergence of new train services, there we can see that the long distance buses are successful, but I don't want to exclude, on the contrary, I really want to advocate that in the future we want to cross-border with trains as well, and it must be in the future as easy to cross-border with trains as we do currently with our buses. I just stopped for a moment because I see that people are writing a lot in the main chat as we have created this Q&A chat. Now to be honest, I don't know what is the difference, but I've been asked to ask you to speak to the other one. Also because this chat is arriving on my screen and I can see you very well, but this is not so important. Thank you, Tom. Always remaining on climate, Christian Schmidt, I remember, so you are director of the European Commission and you are not director for trains, but you are director for land, which includes also road and ship. This is probably also the signal that until now trains did not have all this attention, if I may, because it was the same also 20 years ago when I started this job. Remaining on climate, so Tom from Flix Mobility just said that the future is a mixture of both, especially for these difficult cross-border connections. John is, okay, he says better to invest on urgent things and we can encourage the less than six-hour connections, okay. We calculate, as invested in Europe, that there are more or less 5,000 kilometers which still go by diesel because we have to remember that the train is nice and good if it's clean, but if it still goes by diesel and if it's electrified but then the electricity is not renewable, then it's just a lot of blah blah as somebody else said. So do you still think it's worth to invest in this train infrastructure which is missing and does it fit with your green deal goals? Although this demands a lot of effort by member states which should perhaps be encouraged also perhaps not counting it in their public deficit, no. So taking it out from the stability pact, what is your assessment about what remains to be done in terms of infrastructure? Thanks Dr Maria and let me start by congratulating Investigate Europe for its investigation. You are putting a spotlight and many important messages. I would tend to agree to with a lot of your findings, some less so but you ask me a question so I will answer that. First of all, I agree with Tom. The target is to decarbonize transport and transport is one of the sectors where emissions are still growing and therefore we need to look at all modes and in some cases indeed clean buses can be the best choice where the network for rail is not so dense but rail of course also has to give its contribution. It is for the moment the cleanest land transport mode and therefore we talk about shifting to rail because for the moment rail is the cleanest. To answer your question I think we are doing pretty well in terms of rail being green. 55 percent of the network is electrified but you have to look at the percentages of the traffic. 80 percent of the traffic is on electric lines or even 90 percent of the core network and I'm not sure that 100 percent is the target because it may not be economical on things like small rural lines or production sites or port areas to have electrical lines installed. There perhaps you want hydrogen or battery driven trains but I think rail is perfectly on track to be totally zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 which is our target. So yes, I think we will manage that. The investments are there certainly in the recovering resilience facility. The member states have put electrification as one of the important objectives. So I don't think that's the issue of whether rail is going to be green enough. It is more is the electricity produced green enough that it is being used on the trains and Israel efficient enough to take a stronger place in European land transport. Let me finish by saying Glasgow by train no problem I did it to go to the COP took eight hours from Brussels to London one change in London. We rolled through the beautiful countryside of the Lake District I can only recommend it do it thank you. Okay okay but I think Tobias has another experience probably coming from Germany but I prefer to let him say that if you join us let's now enter in the train's world once we agree that trains of course are clean and and would be the best solution if it could be possible to use only the train. When I arrived in Brussels so 20 years ago I was a very young journalist. I remember the mantra in Brussels was always there was no climate emergency at that time it was from road to ride from road to ride it was repeated all the time and at the same time the commissioner was launching the liberalization first packages second package and and the corridors and there was a lot of optimists which remained for for for more than 10 years I would say that this could be possible and today we discovered that so little people saw a few people six percent use the train so something got wrong and also the corridors are not finished they are delayed we have been in the Brenner as you Christian you read our investigation we have been there and now they it should have been finished in 2016 it would be now finished in 1332 with more money I mean we know that there are problems but not only that John mentioned that is a nightmare when you want to to buy a ticket crossing countries companies very often don't talk each other and this will not change with the new regulation which has been approved because this is not mandatory so there are still a lot of weaknesses and just to finish my let's say introduction just to let's speak about the problems not only concatenates ourselves of what is good you launched this very nice I have to say campaign with the connect Europe Express this train which we followed from Lisbon it arrived to Paris in October and it had to change 55 locomotives to cross 26 countries so this shows how complicated still remains this network and just to finish the court of auditor says that is not a network but a patchwork of systems so perhaps the first person who can help us with that is Pio Guido hello because you had and your colleagues as well this very complicated task since 2004 if I'm not wrong to reduce the technicalities in Europe there were more than 14 000 and now you arrived only to 800 which is still a lot we think 800 but you also wrote in your annual report that in the last decade very little has been made in concerning interoperability very little progress so what is the situation Pio of of interoperability of trains in Europe yeah thank you for inviting me good afternoon to all yes I work for a small agency we are 160 people more or less and we have the not very glamorous task to deal with the effort to harmonize all the technical specifications that we have in Europe in the different countries that sometimes creating the problem at the borders that were mentioned before I think the tregrades have been developing nearly for you know nearly 200 years now and they've been at the beginning at the forefront of what was the industrial revolution at the time and they were I can say leading edge technology that required a lot of investment for which we had to do as mentioned before a lot of very costly fixed infrastructure investment like the Brenner tunnel you were mentioning and the others that are still there so the pace of change for railways is clearly on a on a long time I mean infrastructure when we talk about bridges tunnels etc and you put them in place for serving a specific route you cannot change tomorrow if the traffic pattern is more attractive between another pair of cities so I think that rail given this possibility to be very efficient because they have a wheel which are made of steel on on rails which are made of steel the coefficient I mean is very low so it cleared the energy efficiency is very high but on the other end they cannot follow so quickly the evolutions that we have in other sectors in terms of innovation and change today we have rails that more or less have the same gauge and we say the same distance between the tracks in most of Europe except for example in some areas and the train connecting Europe express started from Liberian countries where we have a slight different gauge we have different standards for the electrification that was mentioned is covering most of the core network but still we have at least four different voltages that we use today in Europe and smaller variation in terms of the geometry of these wires overhead that provide the power supply to the pantograph of the locomotives and because we are getting a better more safe more I can say digital way of controlling the trains there was a lot of development in terms of the safety systems that are on board the trains so today in most advanced system we have computers on board the trains that can receive information from the track side so that they can check and control if the train is really traveling at the speed that is supposed to travel it's not exceeding it it's not exceeding the distance at which it's supposed to go and those systems where development started in the last decades of the last century or the last millennium let's say and they were still done in a time where there was no every package and integrated railways in within the boundaries of member states and they were developed mostly for the domestic traffic with domestic industries with local champions and as I mentioned those systems are still in place today they ensure the safety of the trains running in the different countries but they contribute this fragmentation that we have in Europe in terms of electrification in terms of gates and time in terms of you just a little bit I start being a bit Italian now sorry because okay for people who don't know very well how it works and you say it's a comprehensible because it's concerned safety that we have these different systems but this does not happen with the flights with the flights we manage to have one safety I guess I'm not an expert but at least a flight can travel from a country to another one without changing the driver because this is the case with the train they need to speak the language of the country where they arrive level minimum B1 which seems to be back in the middle age I have to say and these safety measures as well you worked and you and I will put you in the bubble let's say you invested a lot on a common signalization system we call it in this difficult acronym which is EMS and I think the commission spent almost four billion euros for the research so it was a huge work to arrive to a system which could be applied in German in France in the biggest market and and now you made it mandatory in the fourth package by 2030 for the corridors and 2050 men in all EU trains but the progress are so little what's happened me and I will ask also Christian to ask me to tell me politically what is possible to be done about that yeah I mean EMS is maybe the most visible I can say element of the difficulties but also the progressive success that we are having with with this you're right I mean according to the TNT regulation by 2030 all the the core network should be equipped with ETCS EMS with this system and in addition should also allow trains freight trains that can run up to 740 meters of length which is not something that we have that we can travel with the 22.5 tons per axle I mean the TNT regulation is not only about the TCS but definitely by 2030 about 50,000 kilometers should be installed and and enabled to run trains with the TCS and today we are at about 6,000 kilometers so I think countries are not investing a lot in ERTMS as you you say in your reports yes I think that's as I mentioned there are systems already in place today and in different countries they come from different backgrounds for example we have Denmark and maybe I deferred to Christian but they have decided because of the the age of the current system that they had in place that the best move was to install a TCS all over the network in Denmark and of course it's not something that you do overnight so I think that they are well advanced there there are other countries like Italy I come from Italy we opened the first high speed line the Roman Empire in 2004 and it was in service from day one with the TCS there is no other four back system there is no parachute if you want now all the high speed lines in Italy or for example all the high speed lines in Spain are running daily with the TCS so countries are investing into that there is a disparity and there are differences because of the different age and performance of the national system that they have in place and the 2030 target it's an ambitious one and maybe I leave the commission talk about that but I think that we see that that we can make it if we really I can say we work together on that I will just mention one additional element is not only the number of kilometers that we have with ETCS is also to make sure that this system is really implemented following the rules you mentioned the number of rules that the agency is dealing with what we are doing is trying to reduce the national rules to make sure that all countries implement the harmonized rules and I mean it's not a sexy work it's a lot of I can say details a heavy discussion on technical details we are seeing some progress but I think that the target is ambitious we have the means in place to do that but I think that as an agency we would like to I can say get a little bit more teeth or I can say possibility to be more aggressive in the positive sense vis-à-vis member states and other national safety authorities when we find that some of those rules should not be applied any longer we ask that directly to christian smith do you think through the year I would now as the teeth in the fourth packages it said that they can complain attack let's say a country do you think this should be done do you think the deadline of 2050 is still realistic or because we have to remind people outside that installing the rtms in a locomotive costs around 250 000 euros so it's a lot of money or somebody told us that as these concerns especially cross-border connection shouldn't that be limited to cross-border connections and not all also regional national train so the rtms is still a priority and can be realized or it's it's just an utopia you know that many times the commission thanks maria I would you know compare this a little bit to the vaccination I mean I should be only vaccinate people who are crossing borders and going outside the house no we need another bit of a first mover disadvantage in in ERTMS those who go first face these high costs and they are asking why should we etc etc so the only solution to that is strict deadlines and we will be setting more tight obligations in the next 10 t guidelines on this but on track site deployment of ERTMS we are on track 80 by 2040 will be met but yes to answer your question the european railway agency needs resources it has a strong mandate under the fourth railway package infringement procedures based on era findings can be can be launched and we won't hesitate to do that I think it's very important and your investigation shows that as well we cannot go on with railway nationalism I would call it fragmentation PO called it we need to move away from a sort of loose coordination approach to true harmonization only then will we bring down the costs for operators you mentioned the connecting europe express it wasn't a showcase to show the unifying power it was the I would say almost well it was to you know show the the positive message that in the middle of a pandemic we can still go across europe in a train but it solved nothing it solved nothing and it's shana spotlight on these issues that you have just mentioned and mobilized a lot of political momentum and an attention to the issues of interoperability that we are talking about now and I would I would finish by adding this isn't just about making it affordable and practical to cross borders for then for the operators the the new services that are after all coming on stream it's also a very strong european interest for the railway supply industry that we move away from this fragmentation that we achieve economies of scale we call ourselves a global power in rail we won't be in the future if we keep producing units and locomotives for dedicated small fragmented markets we will not achieve economies of scale so yes we are dealing with obsolete rules the european railway agency has the power to tear those national borders down it needs a bit more resources to do so I think pio would agree with that he called it a small and not so glamorous agency it is a glamorous agency but I wish it was bigger so it does have the powers in on paper it does have the mandate to do what we are talking about and it is happening but it's not happening fast enough we all agree with that thank you christian I would like to keep the floor to to to john now but I'm sorry because I can't avoid myself to ask you a question what you just said before because you are pointing um a very sensitive issue which is the um some sources call it the collusion between the industry and the some companies and we experienced it in our research today that this is still happening I can't of course call it really collusion but um let's say the not opening of some companies which create systems that can only be used by the local national company and not by foreign competitors this happened to remfe the Spanish public company who is trying to get into the French market and and there are problems created by the French industry are some who is producing things for them so it's it's a mess and they wrote to you to the commission they are now really openly speaking about that so it becomes a problem for for them and is the commission also playing its role of of guardian monitoring that I mean there is ERI but you can also attack the infrastructure authority I mean you you can are you going to do that let me show you we are playing our role as guardian of the treaty collusion is a work from a competition law and it refers to price fixing and cartels and if any of that is happening it's illegal and will be dealt with um I think the issue that you are referring to here is again the fragmentation of the national markets and the vested interest of the historical players the legacy players who of course are defending their markets and this is the the the the natural behavior of of companies to defend their market shares our job as regulators and the jobs of the new entrants and competitors is to challenge those established positions and you refer and keep referring to what happened 20 years ago and nothing has happened don't forget the fourth railway package and the opening up of the European markets only just entered into force in the middle of a pandemic was where some of the new operators wanting to invest were facing I would say a lot of headwinds but there are signs of spring there are good news you refer to Italy and to Spain when in Italy because of competition from new entrants the number of passengers have quadrupled in a decade 1 million in 28 3.6 million in 2018 and if you promise not to tell anyone not on this webinar probably alitalia suffered from the efficiency of new competition on rail and took over the domestic market from from aviation in italy in spain if you look at the entry there from essence if we go and also a new local spanish competitor it is driving ridership up and it's reducing the prices and more revenues for the infrastructure manager so so competition is working it's simply not yet working enough in all areas and you know going from france into spain is fine now we want to see spain go into france italy and companies going into france as well and there are reasons we can talk about why this is not happening yet but do not draw the the conclusion that unbundling isn't working that competition isn't working it is the opposite it is working it's not working fast enough and there are obstacles that we need to tear down together thank you thank you very much john john worth can you help me a little bit more who who are the responsible of this uh fragmentation of the railway network patchwork let's say kind of the the elephant in the room is the national railway companies and those are the very same national railway companies that form a trade association in broswell's called community of european railways and which trade association was it that actually organized the very same connecting europe express that christian schmidt has been talking about that would be the community of european railways the very state incumbents which are the root of the problem you did not need 55 different locomotives for the connecting europe express you probably could have done it with five you could have run it with the seamen's vectron locomotive which operates freight europe wide why did you run 55 different locomotives because every national railway company wanted its locomotive yeah it was not only an interoperability issue that was true and there was nothing wrong with that there was a national railway companies behaving badly towards each other i was on that connecting europe express the polish railways pkp put their shiny brand new built in 2020 locomotive on the front of the connecting europe express and it wasn't allowed to cross the last few kilometers into check republic where it would be technologically compatible because the railway company had not actually got it cleared to drive the bohemian on the check side that's nothing the eu can fix now it's bad behavior by the incumbent railway companies and christian schmidt mentioned france and spain the biggest scandal in european railways is the high-speed railway line connecting fergeras in spain with perpignan in france now high-speed railway line cost what more than one billion euros to construct with a with as far as i understand it 200 million euros of eu subsidy for the line and it has two trains high-speed each way each day it is absolutely scandalous and ideally we have competition that works in spain or potentially in italy but when s and cf sent its trains to spain it took the french signaling out of them so it couldn't operate them on cross border routes so i take what christian schmidt says about about liberalization working potentially in national markets but cross border it does not work so far and there are major major difficulties and headaches and particularly with regard to the national mentality and there is a difficulty as well and this is where i would expect and hope for more activity and more determination from the european commission is to have a systematic analysis of exactly what the problems are on different cross border railway routes so let's take it if christian will want to go and visit pio guido at the european at the european railways agency he might want to take for example a cross border route between monts and valenciennes where the european where the european railways agency is located but the track doesn't exist there are two kilometers of track missing on that cross border connection so if you look at for example belgium to france cross border connections there are loads of places where the track is missing you could actually basically make relatively cheap quick investments in infrastructure that would improve the situation the second problem is like the one between figueras and basalona where the track exists but trains don't run which is also comparatively ridiculous right and the third is when tracks exist and trains run but you can't very easily book them right now that might sound ridiculous you're running a train and you can't get a ticket for it but that's how ridiculous european railways are indulge it conclude if i book a ticket from berlin to strazburg you know deutscher barn's website will give me a ticket price of 105 euros cheapest price right if i'm on the cross border regional train for the past few kilometers if i book instead to the final station before the border kehl and then book kehl to strazburg it costs me 40 euros right now i know that trick because i'm a railway nerd right these are the types of problems right the line to the city of the european railways agency the cross border train to the city that hosts the european parliament at the very least the european commission could potentially be doing a bit more in the way of naming and shaming of the member states pointing out where these problems exist i am obliged to give you the floor i'm grateful for that and first of all i said competition is working but i certainly did not say that competition and opening up for a market integration in itself is enough it's not and that's the very reason the commission is coming forward next month with its section plan on cross border long distance passenger rail because it will address all those i would say technical but they are also of course commercial barriers to entry and to do exactly what john is saying exploit the cross border market which um and that's going to be in our first paragraph of the action plan the percentage is too low so what will be your concrete proposals in this action plan we are all waiting for that yeah well great i can give you the 10 points but the college decides next week sorry next month but interoperability is one thing infrastructure gaps is another thing the lack of rolling stock is a third thing the management of capacity and the lack of european thinking in the way that capacity is allocated which i would say translate maybe a domestic national frame of mind or you could say protectionism um is another interpretation of it um the eib will be associated with a market offer on rolling stock something i know is dear to john's heart and and all these issues are technical issues perhaps but they are the reason why the integration of the single european railway area which we have on paper hasn't materialized in reality so there is certainly work to be done and and if i can just issue the appeal to everyone to lower the national defense mechanisms and accept that by allowing this competition to take place across borders the overall pie of rail will grow and everybody will will benefit this it's the exact same reasoning that the commission has been right about in all different areas of the economy and so far it hasn't happened in one of the oldest sectors in the european economy because it's happened everywhere else and it has worked and has driven down prices and it hasn't yet happened in rail and it must happen immediately from butch hold i would like to involve you in this discussion um um flicks mobility has also started running trains uh although your big success is with buses and and so you are experiencing how difficult is to penetrate a national market can you give us example on how difficult it is uh in germany you are in sweden what are the differences and then we can also introduce these other problem big problem which is the access fees which are so different from a state to another one if you can also explain what is it definitely these are all of them are very relevant points um actually so um we started our first flicks train in germany in 2018 um and we started in sweden them as well this year um and there is a huge difference between the german system where we still have a vertically integrated incumbent state owned to sweden where we have a separated infrastructure manager from operations so let me give you an example if we apply for tracks in germany so if you want to run without train um between Berlin and Stuttgart so between northeastern and southern germany then we have to ask the infrastructure manager which belongs to deutsche barn for access to these tracks this happens by paper so there is no online tool for it or um any digital solution no our network planners have to take a software then they have to look for possible paths then they have to print it and then they have to send it to deutsche barn and deutsche barn is then taking its time one two three months is checking whether these parts are available or not and after some time one two months they come back and tell us sorry this path is not available full stop there's no alternative there's nothing then our infrastructure uh planners have to go back again and have to redraw the entire planet's in an incredibly long process and you have a high level of insecurity because this happens year by year by year so you don't know the private operators we are whether you will have the same tracks next year then you have sweden which is the exact like the extreme and exact opposite of germany here you have an independent infrastructure manager that treats you as a client as a railway undertaking that actually wants more services on rail and where you have a digital solution where the entire process takes two or three weeks you have a website where you see which path is available where are possible conflicts with whom do i have to talk if there is a conflict to find a solution together and you just resolve the issues way earlier you have more security you know that you can run your services and that's why you can see in sweden there are several operators both private and state owned competing against each other you have lower prices for the tickets and you have more passengers traveling in trains and more importantly less people traveling in cars and just one addition to that there's also another factor you mentioned that the track access charges in sweden we pay for our trains the direct costs so we only pay the costs that incur when we run with our trains on the track so we pay approximately 1 euro 50 per kilometer in sweden in germany we pay on average 7 to 8 euros per kilometer the tracks are the same the quality of the infrastructure is not better in germany overall but we pay much more because there's a charge added on top because the infrastructure manager part of the integrated company has to make a profit which is insane so there are huge differences and that's why from our perspective it is not understandable why integrated companies do still exist and why they still can cause these extremely high inefficiencies the infrastructure is not well used the prices are artificially high and it's extremely difficult to enter the market so Mr. Smith could you answer to that will the commission try to put order in these I would say jungle of access fees where the access to the market single market is so different and and also there is no transparency in the prices this is what we have also witnessed is talking with sources I would say especially in the big countries are you thinking of trying to harmonize that or at least make them more transparent thank you Maria but please let the record show that what Tom just said and I agree with him entirely was a strong advocacy for the unbundling of the fourth railway package right hafikverket in sweden which I visited on this wonderful connecting europe express is exactly that it is an independent infrastructure manager offering affordable track access for all the competitors and competition is working arriving prices up sorry prices down and ridership up I also agree entirely with Tom this path allocation mechanism we have in Europe for the moment is manual it's annual and it's a legacy of the past we have to go digital it has to be path allocation by the click of a of a mouse the sector is working on it and if they sorted out we will give it legislative enforcement next next year it's called the timetable redesign process and it's absolutely crucial to optimize the use of tracks as they are today coming to the track access charges basically you have two models in europe and that explains the big differences that you see you have countries sweden is one where investments have been made in railways and where tracks are for free more or less right and there you can run night trains and you can compete etc then you have other countries where you don't have so many public funding going into the railways and you don't want to subsidize with the public service obligations there you charge a fee you charge a fee and that's where you recuperate the cost of the of the network and the cost of maintenance now I can as an economist understand both those different models because you know somebody's got to pay at the end of the day but I can also see that the difference of model and the countries that have high track access charges and do not give for instance priorities to the cross-border trains we all want to see they are an impediment to the growth of a cross-border passenger rail that we want to to see so there are there are two solutions that we will advocate including in our action plan more investment more public investment into rail and a lot of of it is coming from the recovering resilience facility and the EU's post-covid pandemic recovery plan and the other is to lower track access charges where possible to only charge direct costs and certainly not to discriminate against competition from cross-border connections it's already possible under EU legislation but it's not happening enough and we would like to see member states not charge levels that simply are an impediment to this so and I would say there is a little bit of static thinking in also what I explained if you reduce the track access charges and you get more trains to run overall again you are growing the pie of the market you are growing the volume of traffic and your own country maria has been the best example of this in europe because italy has introduced track access charges that are differentiated to the level of saturation on the network so if you want to go from milano centrale to roma termini those are saturated and you will pay a high price for track access but if you want to go a little bit beyond that outside that very saturated part of the network the price is a lot lower that's the way smart charging of european railways should be done and it's possible under EU legislation but we will encourage that it's done much more thank you thank you very much you mentioned my country i know it's black and white because we are very good for high speed although it costs a lot a lot and we have a situation in the south of italy so it's very polarized the debate in italy about trains but let's go beyond and in fact i would like to to pick up i am really sorry that i am not answering to all these Q&A questions i'm reading because it would take another debate but i pick up one question because it will help us to i mean go on in the discussion and this is comes from one of our sources you probably met already some of you benedict weibel who was the former head of swiss railways and is now still in the market and he said that i mean he's criticizing the failure of the u-rail policies and he said that the big mistake is the split of the companies in different parts like infrastructure and other parts which is not working and why i pick up that because we know that this is now a hot debate in for the creation of the new government in germany where some parts included the greens i have to say we were surprised about that uh are supporting that i guess to also break the the power of ah to be as is there ah to be as welcome hello i i will give you the floor in two minutes just a moment um and so perhaps it could be a way to break the the power of of the giant dutch ban which remained still um so powerful i as it was 20 years ago um but in many other countries um this has been done not everywhere to to really separate infrastructure and operation i mentioned some uh troika countries for instance we wrote it in our investigation in portugal in greece this has been really done and the situation is not really good they don't speak each other very often these two companies so um perhaps pio first if you can help us in understanding that from an infrastructure point of view have you experienced some difficulties when um when the company uh belong to two different actors let's say uh and then of course i asked the political side about that of course we don't deal with the economy and we don't do this this part of the regulation so i would give maybe this consideration to the commission or the other the other partners maybe on the more technical side uh two things i just remind that we were discussing about e atms and the slow progress that we have just it was an idea a child of the integrated dragris because it started in the end of last century as i mentioned before prairie packages before even the first directive on the separation of the account between the infrastructure and the taking so if you take it from an engineering point of view sometimes you think that you know it's easier if the same company is managing the the trains and is managing the truck side then everything should work because you have the same engineering company or the same pool of engineers to design the two parts of the system and magically it worked honestly i must say it's not always true i mean we have a lot of legacy systems that were developed in this fashion with integrated companies and sometimes the engineering documentation and you know the documents that will allow you for example to find other suppliers to produce the same products that you need are not so well maintained because there was this i can say integrated way of working sometimes integrated also with your national suppliers and then you didn't pay so much attention to formalize all the requirements and i think that we are paying a little bit this price so i'm not talking about the making the economic effect of that but from a pure engineering point of view i would say that i don't think that's what the swiss railways are today still advocating in the frame of a tcs to have one single authority that deals with all the specifications it's a right solution i think we need more transparency open source also for specification is the way to go and and we need to put in the open what is necessary to have a better with but i will stop there let's admit are you on the same line because even some former commission important representative i spoke with for instance carol bink you know he was the first year tms coordinator he at the end of this interview said i think if the commission would would propose again that i mean there was an historical reason why this separation was asked at the beginning 20 years ago was to break monopolies but he said i think they would act different in a different way do you share this opinion or you think infrastructure and operator must remain separated i i don't share that opinion and i and neither do you i think your investigation shows that you you find national protectionism to be a problem now if you find that to be a problem how would you like to maintain virtually integrated monopolies which is what we are what we are talking about now like in other network industries across europe unbundling these vertically integrated monopolies is the only way that you can stimulate competition across the borders and i think you heard from tam and others the swedish example again but there are this of of of perfect separation and how that drives competition so this was achieved partially full unbundling with the fourth wayway package and of course what is still the model in germany is is possible to keep a virtual integration provided that you have clear firewalls within the companies to avoid conflict of interest and to finish on switzerland yes switzerland has a fully integrated model for that reason it is an island protected from competition from any of its neighbors which survives in splendid isolation so i don't think this is a model it is a model within switzerland because switzerland is investing a lot in its own railway system and for that switzerland is a model we should all invest as much as switzerland is doing if we could but it's certainly not a model for integrated cross border rail and for access to new services that can only enter when there is competition john worth what do you think about this separation are you following this debate a little bit and the swiss model is not a model we have to follow because trains are around quite well in switzerland at least from training this argument um you get what you pay for um the swiss have one of the highest levels of public subsidies for their railways uh in in a european comparison they invest very heavily in the quality of the network which is a country which has a partial separation has some competition lines and a very good railway austria yeah again high levels of public investment in the railway um if you look at swiss performance on rail freight in switzerland you know it's not as good as it is internationally and swiss rail freight is actually comparatively liberal if it's crossing cross border so ultimately there's this kind of question is is this correlation or causation year as far as i see it how good your railway is depends on how much public investment you can put into the hard infrastructure and switzerland is really good at that and so therefore i i always dislike this argument particularly in germany where i'm based where all the germans go look at how great it is in switzerland to which my response is well are you willing to actually subsidize your railway in germany to the same extent as the swiss do the germans probably aren't and that's probably a better explanation for the problems than whether it's integrated or not thank you i see a hand raised by tom tom do you want to jump in this uh particular issue infrastructure oppression one more thing to add with switzerland um i mean the question here is also for whom do you want to provide the system and do you want to offer rail services for everyone because then it has to be affordable which is not the case in switzerland which we can see with our bus services which are actually very highly used from and to switzerland because a private operators in a long-distance passenger transport cannot enter switzerland without spb allowing them to enter and b because the ticket prices to switzerland and within switzerland are very very high so um you can keep the vertically integrated company but then you will lack a lot of passengers the ones that cannot afford the ticket because you will have just one unified product and even though subsidized will still be more expensive than a product where you have a choice between a low-cost product and a higher quality product which is then differentiated and differentiated in price interesting we should make another debate just on that i think to be as i can welcome you now what's happened are you okay yes i'm okay um i think the issue was um that i was in glasgow uh when i put in the appointment or um the webinar and my calendar didn't change it change the time so um i'm now here in glasgow time but actually uh glasgow time is um not in germany so i understand that's the issue i think okay yes i'm really sorry so it's not because of our train connection that you but uh the train connection could be an issue actually yes so perhaps you could just to to me to join this conversation we are going very far now and i have two two perhaps more topics and then uh i leave you in peace but you um yes you i would say that the movement you represent friday for future was this uh wake-up call for many politicians uh about climate emergency about also another way of living and transport so being outside but a consumer of trains what would you ask to people who can listen to you on uh on bring you to bring more people using the train today yes thank you for the question so i think we heard the first um measure that's a good possibility um right before it so we need an affordable train system so we need to have a public system that is affordable for everyone that is cheaper than going by cars that is cheaper um than fly actually and um this is really important just to have the incentives of the the users of the um users of the trains and all the public services um to really use it and not use it as an exception but use it regularly so this is the first point and that means we have to invest in it and we really need to want it this is important because what we see right now is that we kind of want this but we don't and it's um strong enough and politicians are not strong enough to really stress this issue and also decide for train and for railway and against cars in many issues and this is what we need and this is a decision that politicians should take and this is what we need and of course there are technical issues so we need to build a better railway system for the small cities for the villages that they don't need the car for the rural areas and this is also really important we need and as we also mentioned in the discussion before we need a connected railway system all in Europe so that we for example have one software one app um that we can use um as I said I was in Glasgow it was nightmare going there I know it's not you anymore I did not take the same train as Kristias meet because he said it was a perfect journey you you were on different trains yeah we probably want different trains but I needed because there were some issues of extreme weather and um then I needed to download three apps and I just did research for three or four hours just to go there and I think this is not good actually and to just go by train so these are some matters we could take to make it just more affordable and more easy for users to use so you had me because you bring me towards my two last subjects I wanted to tackle and I saw that some questions arrived in the Q&A chat and even hear about that so one is the ticketing problem and um and passenger rights more in general so after a quite long negotiation we arrived to a new regulation this year but this new regulation did not make mandatory um the what is called true tickets so the fact that people can buy one ticket covering many companies and if you miss a connection you can for example jump on a following train this is not possible today and in most all cases companies don't talk each other um the commissioner then did not propose it as a mandatory so my easy question would be are you thinking of coming back to that because until it's not mandatory probably companies will not change that Christian of course Christian of course well thank you very much um no I agree first of all on on the train to Glasgow I confess I was traveling with a climate train that was organised very efficiently by a pro rail and Euro star and so I would explain that explains and it's true there were extreme weather events um so climate change stopping delegates from going to the climate change conference how ironic um but then there were also strikes in Scottish rail making the journey back complicated so you know rail has some issues that must be dealt with coming to your your your your your serious question ticketing and I I would agree that this is a mess uh this is a mess and the difficulty and time that has to be invested in order to find a train path from point A to point B we've been talking about it for decades and it's not it's not working um let me just uh point out because your own investigation Maria shows it the commission proposed through ticketing in the last uh uh discussion on passenger rights and as your investigation rightly shows it was supported by parliament and it was uh then not taken up by council uh so the commission is certainly aware that this is an issue it is not enough to have some sort of beautiful platform where you can you can find the connections if you cannot also book them and book them with the rights that goes with a contract as as as you have in aviation we are uh hearing I would say a changing tune from the sector that yes they understand and yes they will work on it and yes um uh they are working on uh um solutions let me stress this is not at all a technological issue there is software and middleware and you can provide the data in open data platforms and then the systems can uh work this out it's possible in all other sectors and it's certainly possible in rail as well uh and we have the railway agency and we have our research program shift to rail working on this so all the data protocols it's not the problem the problem are the commercial interests of uh the established market players allowing and seeing their interest in giving uh uh a place for the other smaller operators to be on the market and see their products being marketed on uh these sales platform so uh to answer your question yes we are impatient and if the industry doesn't do this we will legislate um and we will legislate not just for rail but for multimodal ticketing as a whole because it's very important it's very important that a a um a european citizen can get the connection from a bus to a train station to an airport and going back uh again um that makes it a little bit more complicated and I'm not promising a solution for tomorrow and again we will be faced with a legislative proposal that will have to gain the support of parliament and council and as your own investigation shows last time there were a pushback on that we will certainly uh come with a proposal uh on ticketing uh next year thanks a lot thank you thank you for these news um I mean it's also new what I hear that the companies are now more sensitive to that because then companies don't talk with their governments because as we we we proved uh at least Germany France and Spain not to name them opposed these these um this particular point in the regulation so they should start talking with their company if from a commercial point of view there is even an interest to to harmonize this system I see two hands I think I guess it's on this topic um Tom and then Tobias please thank you um I would just like to add again an example from um our experience to this um the issue with uh multimodal ticketing and and creating new ticketing platforms is twofold on the one hand we have to make sure that there's the infrastructure so that people can really use multimodal offers the reality nowadays is very often we have the bus product out there there are flicks buses running across europe and millions of people are using them but we are very often not allowed to stop with the buses outside of railway stations because local city councils decide that buses do not belong into city centers which is not understandable but very often the case or the infrastructure simply is lacking there is no bus stop close to the train stop that's the first part of it so we have to solve um the hard infrastructure and then on the other hand what we fear is that with this discussion around building a new common big ticketing platform we missed the opportunity that we have at hand right now we already have dominant booking channels for rail for example in deutschuban it's barn the e and their fdb navigator um which 98 percent of passengers in germany that book a ticket online are using and 99 percent of rail offering in germany is on that website it's deutschuban but it's also its competitors in local transport the only offer that is not listed there is ours the flicks train offering and so it happens that for example when deutschuban's trains are fully booked all that the visitor of the website sees is trains are fully booked no tickets available even though a flicks train would be running there and there are seats available on that train you can't see them you can't book them so what happens the passengers do not choose the train they take a car instead they fly so that is not what we want to achieve for example yeah so what we have to do first is to use what we already have at hand the dominant booking channels instead of investing a lot of resources and a lot of money in making new platforms known which in the long run will be important but we have an opportunity at hand which we can use in a short term and that we need to use to win more people over to rail right now not in five years not in ten years it's for free we can do it now i think your claim has been heard Tom thank you very much Tobias you wanted to add something on that yes i wanted um now i want to respond to Tom as well but um maybe maybe to the issue before and so i think actually it's pretty important to use this data as also mentioned in this chat as open data so if you really want really want to have um competition in the year if you really want this you can argue to that if you don't want this but if you say you want real competition then you need this data and then the apps can um yeah the apps the apps can fight over the market against each other but we need this data because what we see right now is that we're as tom also mentioned that we're having right now just um just single use for trains single use for i don't know shared cars single use for uh for buses and what are states for if they don't say that we need this platform as a basic infrastructure and of course we can use it for the first first years of Deutsche Bahn or whatever that doesn't matter for me but it is really really important um to put all this together to have a public service public transport service um software and have a public transport service data um that can be used from from every people from from anyone uh in the year and also from outside the year okay platform new platform john what do you want to add on that two very quick points first of all flix bus a hypocrite um if i want to book a flix train yeah and i book it on one of the railway booking platforms like train line it just directs me through to flix bus's website so actually Deutsche Bahn is providing better data to a third party railway booking platform than flix bus is so flix bus is not practicing what it preaches in that respect so um i'm sorry they're too big for their boots in that regard the second point is before we get to tick it to booking you even need to know which trains even run and we don't actually have a reliable completely publicly accessible european rail timetable so if you want to book for example regional trains in spain around basalona uskertrain in um in the basque country trains in many of the balkan countries in greece if you want low-cost tgvs in france the wego product for example those trains don't show in the main websites like Deutsche Bahn's timetable search that's because those train companies don't put those trains into the database system for european timetables called uic merit so before we even get to ticketing before we book the train we as passengers need to know what trains actually exist and that data is actually of a poorer quality now than was the case 10 or 15 years ago and then there's a third problem which is when we even got our tickets booked and we actually want to know is our train running on time the data that we can get about live running is also of a questionable quality so at ticketing i understand is the main problem but there is also a problem with timetabling and with live booking but i would like to stop here this part of conversation because otherwise for people outside it becomes difficult to follow but i understand it's very hot and and there are many souls and you should go on also be laterally talking about that there is another issue which comes up each time we speak about cross-border connections i would like to bring you another time on that because this is what is suffering more we know that for companies i think it was your director pio who told us that companies only think national and 95 percent of their market is national and we can imagine why they don't want to invest in the cross-border connections we experienced that with our journalist paulo who tried to travel he's not so expert like you john who travels all the time but he did the lisbon madrid where the direct connection does not exist anymore and now you need to take four trains it takes 11 hours instead of five hours by car and so we know also that the portuguese presidency before the summer try to bring a new principle of public service obligations into the table in the council and this was just deleted by a big country who thought this was not something that should have been discussed so i have a question about cross-border connection don't you think that as it's so difficult to push also private companies to invest in connections which are not so profitable sometimes it can happen but it concerns important capital in europe that there should be a green light to subsidize those connections and so public service obligations subsidies stated um i ask that of course to christians meet but i would like also to hear you on that the others because for us we think this is crucial to change the problem of cross border connections so what is your opinion on on this principle of pso you call it mr christian smith please thank you maria first i object to the discrimination everybody's tom pew and john and i'm mr smith so i call for equal treatment you are the only one with a tie well it goes right now if that's the problem i'm christian now all right all right okay so the first principle should be of course that if a connection is is commercially viable then let it go let it run and our job our first task should be to reduce the obstacles it should not be the european taxpayer compensating subsidizing for our failure of reducing those inherent structural costs of lack of interoperability national rules and the railway nationalism or the fragmentation that you have identified in your report so first order of the day eliminate those unnecessary costs because we have done a study um um in preparation for our action plan and we find many city pairs many possible cross border connections who would be commercially viable um and could also facilitate a shift to rail from aviation from instance um if those cuts came down can i cut you on that what you said but i'm going to ask your question now but what are these obstacles that in european states should eliminate for instance i put you one on the table where i think also the commission could do something eliminating subsidies to the road is that is that a way to eliminate obstacles to train that's not what i meant by the obstacles when i said obstacles i meant ticketing path allocation all the things we've been talking for about for an hour but you're right level playing field is also certainly part of getting commercially viable because you're competing right so there must be a level playing field is for that reason that the commission has put forward the fit for 55 package which will introduce road pricing which will introduce a extension of emission trading schemes to road and it will also introduce a taxation of kerosene for aviation and i pray the parliament and the council will take this up quickly because if we're serious about railways we should be serious about the level playing field but your question was if we fail to do all that should we then subsidize with psos well we already can it's in the legislation that if the market can't deliver and society wants to have a connection which is perfect i come from a small rural area in danmark right when i came back down to europe 30 years ago i took a night train that doesn't exist today i would love to see that come back i would love to see it being commercially viable it can't be because track access charges in germany are too high and therefore the attempt to bring it back has failed so yes there could be a pso to do that but the important principle only if the market has failed what is now difficult for that to happen is that you are talking about national authorities in various member states having to communicate and agree that this is a socially important objective hybrid services also where for instance in austria there are subsidies then you go into germany there are not subsidies and then you end up in in belgium where there are subsidies it's very complicated and that's one of the reasons it doesn't work the commission as part of the action plan we will announce next month will also pick up this issue because we see a need for greater and clearer guidance on how to do these psos on cross-border connections when several countries are involved so agree entirely this is an issue but please keep in mind the principle if the market can can deliver the taxpayer shouldn't pay for it and the level playing field these are important principles thank you very much we learn a lot of things about what will happen soon we hope it will happen soon um um tom i see again your hand then i i saw john uh with his head saying no many times so i will i will ask you if you agree uh with that and then we go towards then so please tom not too long good what we would like to to add to that thank y'all uh try to stay brief so first of all i fully agree with christian um we really have to make sure not to introduce unnecessary psos where we could achieve way more if we would remove obstacles so for example lower track access charges um for example set up a fund so that also private operators can invest into rolling stock um to operate services um reduce the technical barriers yes it is not so sexy and yes you cannot declare within two years that you will have a new service and you can cut the ribbon but this will solve the issues in the long term the question is do you give the market a painkiller which will get more and more and more expensive over time and if you stop giving it the market fails or do you solve the underlying issues so for us it is very very relevant that we first now speak about removing the remaining obstacles and then if we really want to award psos we have to think about how can we protect actually the open access services because what we have at the moment is the pretty interesting situations that psos services are protected from competition there's an economic equilibrium test so if you want to start a service that competes with a pso then you have to prove that you don't harm this pso too much but there's no such thing the other way around so governments and they actually already did together with the incumbents they awarded psos services where they were perfectly functioning open access services and there we don't understand why you would award a pso because taxpayers money is a scarce resource and this brings me to the last point the question is what do you want to subsidize do you want to subsidize a luxury night train with sleeper cars where maybe seven to ten people are sleeping in and with that you get maybe seven to ten people out of the business class of a flight or do you want to lower track access charges and reduce fees overall for the market to win trains for example like Flix train or other low-cost services that get people out of the Ryanair planes and make the entire plane empty and not just the business class so that's the question we have to answer first before we think about okay we need more psos and we need to subsidize the system more then with exclusive subsidies just for single players so thank you very much thank you very much Tom John what do we have to subsidize yeah I agree with largely with the points of both Christine and Tom have made there there's this rhetoric that's caught on as a result of the failure of the Swedish Agency traffic backup to manage to procure a PSO supported night train from Malmo through Denmark through Germany and through to Belgium the idea that the absence of a PSO is the reason why that that procurement failed I disagree with that basis and that's the reason why I am working on this campaign trains for Europe which is basically trying to solve the night train rolling stock problem part of the difficulty is why you can't scale up long distance services like that is because no railway company so that any suitable trains that they could run and if you are a small operator that would like to try to run a service like that like the Swedish operator snail target for example or maybe the Czech operator Rigidget your access to being able to buy those carriages is very limited while the companies that would have the financial cloud to do so if they wanted to like Deutsche Bahn for example have stepped out of that market and have no intention of re-entering the market so you have a situation that the companies that could don't want to and the companies that want to can't essentially and so that's where I would start is to try to unlock that point now what you have to also do is achieve economies of scale which is then also very difficult for new entrance into the the railway market if you order 20 new night train carriages your cost per carriage is high if you order 200 or 500 new night train carriages your cost per unit is low and so that's therefore the focus of my work to dealing with cross-border particularly night trains in Europe is essentially to say you have to start with the absence of the trains themselves make a order or the EU should help facilitate the order of a new pool of carriages to see which operators could provide those services and if then at the very end of the day you ultimately conclude you're not getting the services that you want then perhaps you come to public service obligations but that is definitely not for solving this problem where you should start thank you very much this brings me to my last question which I asked 12 of you it's it's it's a painful question again for the commission I'm sorry but it's it's important to understand what where are our priorities now in the coming let's say 10 years so we have visiting we have been visiting many of the EU corridors and we know that there are problems in many of them because the infrastructure is going on where there are strong infrastructure but slowly but the problem is also with all the connections with this infrastructure and it's not sure that member states want to invest in these corridors because as we said as also the the agency PO told us they think it's much more important to invest in a national market so my my naive question is I mean sometimes the politician change the policies and we saw it too with the with the fossil energies where the commission slowly my our opinion a bit too slowly is not to financing gas fossil investments anymore I put it like that as he was my son to ask that but wouldn't it be better today to move this money investing in corridors towards capital's connections towards night trains towards this climate emergency where people demand to have more and better trains and they probably don't ask to use all these corridors as also the court of auditors told us that in some of them there is even not a market study who wants to start the future of corridors I don't want to call Christian at the first but I mean if you want to start or PO perhaps I'll let you I'm sorry if I did not involve you too much I will let I will let the commission speak but I mean corridors are not only I can say big tunnels or incredible I can say civil wars that that are missing in some cases yes there is a kind of a missing link that can really make an end-to-end connection which is valuable and there's markets functional and then maybe we should be careful not to take I can say under the spotlight only this this missing link and all the difficulties I mean you mentioned the burner tunnel and clearly this is I mean it will be the longest tunnel in the world so I thought it's not something that I mean is not something easy to to to realize and it can be understandable if they have delays but I think that's if they finish the the tunnel as it was I can say 50 or 100 years ago when we did similar works for connecting Europe with different I can say in the age maybe of the steam locomotive there they are still there we are still using them I mean those investments are really long-term I think I think I think in some cases those missing links we really make sure that something different will change it's not just the car I mean it's the offer that will create the the demand it's not only the current demand that is needed to justify a tunnel or another important work that will be there for for maybe centuries in the future so I'm not so I mean I understand what you say about the money and we always should make sure that we make the better use but I think railways are not something on which you can change priorities in the matter of years I think that we have to take them the long view on that and definitely yes we need the market studies and the economy the economy studies for that but I'm I'm positive that the investment in the railways in the end would be would be useful Christian thanks a lot Maria um well big infrastructure projects the Brenner I think we make no excuses for the hundreds and millions of euros and billions putting put into that 50 percent of trans alpine transport goes through the Brenner and today 70 percent of that is by road the the only way to switch that proportion is long term with the tunnel that we are building it is a pan-european priority that is essential for reaching our green deal objectives it's unfortunate it's take it's taking so long but unfortunately that's not rare for these big infrastructure projects I would say for the EU funding in in general we have this called the the connecting Europe facility 70 percent more than 70 percent of what is spent with EU funding is on on rail in the transport area so certainly we are putting our money where our mouth is and it is targeted very carefully at the gaps in the cross-border connections where you are right member states tend not to prioritize because let's face it the revenue their turnover is made on the domestic markets and they tend not to prioritize those gaps at the borders this is why we have the connecting Europe facility to address that and again next month we will come out with the new maps the new tenti guidelines that will show where the coming pot of billions will be invested and you will see you don't like corridors or understand but you may like the new concept of European transport corridors where you have high speed lines on the on the map you have all these corridors integrated into target investments and we will use those investments also to address all the other things we've been talking about for an hour EU member states are not going to get money from the European Commission if it's not also implementing all the standard standardization the harmonization the role of ERTMS utilization etc so it's a stick that we have as always it would be better if it was bigger but we are addressing those those gaps and corridors are a useful concept for doing so thanks good I received many messages from my direction that we are getting very late so I think we can close this here we are looking forward these new commission proposals we I don't don't like corridors Christian I would like only now capitals European capitals to be better connected by train and I think this is the wish of all of us and if it can be done together with the corridors welcome I thank all of you it was a very rich discussion sometimes it's complicated for people who are not used to that this also shows the complexity of the of the railway system but I mean hopefully to be us there is a new political behavior now which will change minds and so thank you to all of you and have a nice evening and for those who did not receive an answer I apologize and you can write to us also in our website it's mail at investigate trade union Europe dot EU and we will ask to all we will answer to all your questions so thank you very much bye bye