News

26. May 2025

Connecting Europe through High-Speed Rail – Feedback from the Rail Working Group

Enhancing rail transport is key to achieving the economic and environmental objectives, boosting European competitiveness, reinforcing the Single Market, and advancing the decarbonisation of transport. Connecting Europe through an EU highspeed rail network is crucial for strengthening European integration, economic development, and regional and social cohesion.

The Rail Working Group (RWG) welcomes the European Commission’s initiative to present a Communication on Connecting Europe through High-Speed Rail. Both the Letta and Draghi reports have highlighted the importance of a clear plan connecting major European capitals and cities through an efficient high-speed rail network, enhancing both rail attractiveness and investment needs in the sector. Given such pressing need for a stronger EU cross-border high-speed rail network, we expect the European Commission to clearly identify and address the current obstacles to enhancing high-speed rail connectivity in the EU.

The RWG’s mission is to promote the 2007 Luxembourg Protocol to the Cape Town Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment relating to railway rolling stock (the Luxembourg Rail Protocol). This Protocol, in force since 8 March 2024, is designed to eliminate a critical existing barrier to the development of a pan-European high-speed rail network – i.e. the lack of accessible private sector credit for rolling stock, in particular when it moves across national borders, without state guarantees. The Protocol will enable more affordable funding by reducing creditor risk and banks’ risk – weighting, which ultimately lowers their cost of capital and therefore operator costs. It provides protection for creditors through innovative tools, including the introduction for the first time of a public register of security interests and the creation of a new global system for uniquely identifying, and permanently marking, rolling stock with a unique identifier. As an international treaty, it creates a common security system for creditors, simplifying documentation, safeguarding owners, creditors and operators from thirdparty claims and fraud, and – when consistently adopted across EU member states – facilitating seamless cross-border operation of financed rolling stock.

Mobilising both public and private investment is crucial for developing an EU highspeed rail network. However, this must be done intelligently and complementarily: public funds should be preferably directed toward infrastructure, while private capital should be encouraged to finance rolling stock, thereby relieving a heavy financial burden on the public sector. Moreover, rail competitiveness depends inter alia on access to cheaper funding – something the Protocol helps to achieve. Broader use of operating leasing, made easier by the Protocol, will promote more standardised or interoperable rolling stock and stimulate the growth of a secondary market for rolling stock across Europe. By enabling asset-based rather than debtor-based financing, the Protocol lowers market entry barriers, supports the creation of independently financed joint ventures, and encourages more dynamic, competitive operations. It also facilitates operating leasing, which further enhances operator flexibility and liquidity and underwrites market growth both for publicly and privately owned operators.

Three Member States have already ratified the Protocol, as has the EU itself in respect of its competences, and three further Member States are expected to ratify soon. The High-Speed Rail Masterplan should now call on all other Member States to ratify it as soon as possible and its implementation should be integrated into the forthcoming Communication as a clear policy objective. The RWG would welcome the opportunity to contribute further to the targeted consultation phase referenced in the call for evidence.

About the Rail Working Group

The Rail Working Group is a Swiss-based not-for-profit association focused on the adoption and implementation of the Luxembourg Rail Protocol. It has about 90 direct members, plus thousands of rail stakeholders represented indirectly by industry organisations that belong to, and support, the objectives of the RWG.

Contact us

For more on the Luxembourg Rail Protocol and the Rail Working Group

Go to www.railworkinggroup.org