The Czech and Austrian national rail operators ČD and ÖBB have “colluded to prevent a new entrant”, according to the European Commission who fined both companys a total of 48.7 million Euro in violation of competition rules.
The EU pushes for more sustainable travel solutions continent-wide. The plan is to strengthen long-distance and cross-border connections with the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) policy and funding for railway infrastructure. While the demand for rail travel is high, national operators and startups are competing with “unreasonably low prices” for flights, night trains are experiencing a renaissance and experts are calling for a Europe-wide kerosine tax.
The CEO of Rutronik, a German semiconductor distributor, believes EU subsidies for the sector are missing their mark. The European Public Prosecutor is investigating possible abuses in two EU-funded railway renewal projects in Bulgaria. Spain’s First Vice-President and Acting Economy Minister Nadia Calviño is to be proposed as a candidate to chair the European Investment Bank (EIB).
A video of a railway track being removed has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times after it circulated in posts that claim it shows Lithuania cutting off transit with a Russian exclave after the EU sanctioned certain goods in response to Russia’s invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in 2022. Although Lithuania did follow the EU sanctions in blocking certain goods to Kaliningrad, the video has been shared in a false context. It was uploaded in a 2017 post about railway repairs in Estonia, years before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Keyword searches found no official reports about Lithuania removing the railway track.