High speed between Paris, Madrid and Lisbon is coming. This Wednesday, the European Commission presented a series of recommendations to governments to speed up the development of rail connections between all capitals of the Union no later than 2040. In this way, The journey between Lisbon and Paris, passing through Madrid, can be done in just 9 hours.
Brussels, which presents an “action plan” for this purpose without a specific budget for the moment or details of the measures, anticipates that to achieve this goal it will be necessary to set “binding deadlines” no later than 2027 for “remove cross-border bottlenecks” and identify high-speed options (including those above 250 kilometers per hour) “when they are economically viable“.
“The Madrid-Lisbon connection will be a reality in the coming years,” said the Transport Commissioner, the Greek conservative. Apostolos Tzitzikostasin reference to the agreement reached last week between so that you can travel between the two capitals of the Iberian Peninsula in a maximum of five hours in 2030 and that high speed will allow it to be done in three hours in 2034.
However, the European commissioner has warned that, in order for the goals for this project and others of high speed in the European Union to be met, It is necessary that the proposal for the next European budget goes forward, as designed by the community Executive.
At the same press conference, Tzitzikostas also referred to his department’s efforts to unblock the bottlenecks on the border between Spain and France, countries with which he has said he maintains frequent contacts in a frank manner and has announced that he plans to visit the border “soon” accompanied by the Transport Ministers of both countries. It is already planned in the priority network of the European Union, which sets the deadline for completing this project as 2030, however, Emmanuel Macron’s Government opted in 2023 to postpone investments in cross-border connections to prioritize internal oneswhich points to a delay in this connection until at least 2042.
In any case, the commissioner has pointed out that the plan presented this Wednesday affects the connection of the capitals as the “base” of the interconnections, but he has assured that Brussels does not forget other “large cities” that will be included in the mapping later, “including Barcelona.”
Other routes highlighted by the Commission in its plan, based on the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T), include the main high-speed and very high-speed passenger nodes, for example to link Berlin and Copenhagen in four hours instead of the current seven or Sofia and Athens in six hours, instead of the current 13 hours and 40 minutes.
According to the calculations of the Community Executive, the completion of the TEN-T high-speed network scheduled for 2040 will cost around 345,000 million euroswhile a more ambitious network operating at very high speeds (above 250 km/h) could cost up to 546,000 million euros between now and 2050.
More accessible tickets
The European Commission also points out the need to offer a “more attractive regulatory framework” to the railway industry and the operators to encourage investment and the development of innovative solutions, while promoting competition, for example with cross-border ticketing and booking systems.
“The train will definitely be the preferred transportation over the plane. It will be a reality in 2030,” The commissioner has assured, who has also announced that he hopes to present a proposal at the beginning of 2026 so that Europeans can “reserve and purchase with just one click on your phone or computer” a single cross-border and multimodal ticket that allows them to cross the European Union with different companies. To this end, he added, he will propose within that period a reinforcement of the directive on train passenger rights.
The commissioner has put Spain e Italia as an example that the liberalization of the sector has allowed prices to be lowered and the number of train passengers to increase, but he has warned that there are still important gaps in other European regions and that “well-financed and well-maintained” infrastructure is necessary to encourage this competition.
Along these lines, and in the commitment it defends for more competitive and sustainable transport in the European Union, Brussels has also presented this Wednesday a “sustainable transportation investment plan” (STIP), aiming to provide a “common approach” to boost investment in renewable and low-carbon fuels for aviation and maritime transport. This being the case, the European Union aims to mobilize at least 2.9 billion euros between now and 2027, using clean energy mechanisms.
