January 2020

A SERIES OF MEETINGS TOOK PLACE IN BRUSSELS

At the end of January just before the UK formally left the European Union 3 members of the campaign joined a series of meetings organised through Back-on-Track with a group of MEPs, civil servants from DG Move and the head of The Community of European Railways. We received a very warm welcome at all the meetings that we attended on the 28th & 29th January.

As part of the New Green Deal the MEPS are clearly keen to see an expansion of both day and night train services. They are hoping that a new night train from Berlin to Brussels can start before the end of 2020.

We found out from DG-Move that the European Commission were planning to make 2021 “The European Year of Rail”

The train companies now recognise that the market for night trains is no longer in decline and others could be persuaded to follow the lead of Austrian Railways(OBB). OBB launched their new twice weekly night train from Vienna to Brussels on Sunday 26th January with an “on-time” arrival in Brussels the next day.

We came away with the impression that the train companies would be working together to make it easier for through bookings by linkages between their websites.