European environment
DB Group
The European Greening Transport Package
By 2050, greenhouse gas emissions from transport are to be reduced by 90% compared with 1990. To this end, the European Commission presented a comprehensive package of measures on July 11, 2023. The following proposals are directly relevant for rail transport:
- more efficient capacity management in cross-border rail transport,
- the revision of the directive on maximum permitted dimensions and weights in road freight transport, and
- a proposal for the standardized calculation of transport-related greenhouse gas emissions.
- The proposal for revision of the Combined Transport Directive was adopted in a second step on November 7, 2023.
The European Commission’s legislative proposals are currently being discussed further by the Council and the European Parliament. At the meeting of the Transport Council on June 5, 2025, the transport ministers adopted a progress report on the revision of the directive on maximum permitted dimensions and weights. The aim is for the Capacity Regulation to be agreed in the second half of 2025.
Passenger transport
Legislative proposal for Single Digital Booking and Ticketing Regulation
The new EU Transport Commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas announced on November 4, 2024, that he would present a Single Digital Booking and Ticketing Regulation draft in 2025. The project had already played a prominent role as the only rail policy measure in Ursula von der Leyen’s guidelines for her second term of office in mid-2024. The key aim is to make all cross-border train connections bookable on one or more platforms. The new Transport Commissioner has also held out the prospect of a second regulation on multimodality and a possible revision of passenger rights. The European Commission is currently examining various legislative options. The most far-reaching option provides for the mandatory sale of tickets from competitor railways independently of commercial contracts. This option even proposes an unbundling of ticketing from the transport companies.
Consideration of the Open Sales and Distribution Model sector standard in the TSI TA
The European Commission is currently working with the European Railway Agency (ERA) to revise the Technical Specifications for Interoperability of Telematics Applications (TSI TA). This will also set the course for ticketing, such as the definition of the fare data structure and the interface for booking and paying for international/national tickets, for which the sector has already developed a solution with the Open Sales and Distribution Model (OSDM) interface.
The European Commission has so far declared its opposition to a holistic inclusion of OSDM in the TSI TA and intends to entrust the European standardization body CEN/CENELEC with the task of developing a new standardization interface in the near future.
If OSDM is not, or not sufficiently, taken into account in the TA TSI, this would mean that DB Group/the sector would have to deal with new technical regulations in the long term (2028 to 2029) while OSDM is being implemented (by 2025/2026).
Proposals for multimodal passenger rights and to strengthen the rights of customers
On November 29, 2023, the European Commission introduced the Passenger Mobility Package. Among other things, it contains proposals for amending the existing regulations on passenger rights and a proposal for a new regulation on passenger rights in the case of multimodal journeys, i. e. where passengers combine several modes of transport. On December 5, 2024, the European Council adopted a general approach on the proposals and weakened the key points of the European Commission’s proposals. On June 24, 2025, the EU Parliament’s Transport Committee voted on amendments to the Passenger Mobility Package. While the European Commission primarily wants to improve the enforcement of passenger rights in the existing passenger rights regulations and tighten the reporting obligations of the member states, the EU Parliament’s amendments are aimed at strengthening and expanding the content of passenger rights, especially in air transport. Improvements are also being demanded for rail passengers with regard to reimbursement procedures and the obligation to provide proof of force majeure. The proposed amendments for multimodal journeys are mainly aimed at providing better protection for passengers through provisions on the liability of the individual carriers and intermediaries involved in a journey. Carriers and intermediaries should also pay additional compensation if they fail to adequately inform passengers of their rights prior to purchase. The proposals are now being discussed between the European Parliament and the European Council, together with the European Commission.