ALLRAIL calls on Poland’s Ministry of Infrastructure and its agency CUPT to fix the barriers to entry for those wanting to register to take part in its preliminary market consultation for competitively tendered inter-regional and international passenger rail services after 2030.

➣ Published on 16 June 2026, with just 10 days to respond, the CUPT webpage containing the consultation notice has appeared to be inaccessible from outside Poland, returning connection time-out errors.

o This means that market players from other EU Member States need a workaround merely to access the basic documents.

➣ Participation also appears to be limited to licensed railway operators already holding a Single Safety Certificate for Poland.

o Such a certificate is necessary to operate services, not to provide input on a tender consultation. It can be obtained during the mobilisation phase before operations begin

This is not good enough for a process that will help shape Poland’s post-2030 competitive tendering model for taxpayer subsidised Public Service Obligations (PSOs), as agreed by the Polish government under the EU 4th Railway Package.

Furthermore, the need for yet another consultation is hard to understand:

➣ Just last month, the Ministry of Infrastructure already held a detailed consultation on the same issue: the plan for inter-regional and international passenger rail services.

➣ Meanwhile, back in 2024, many market actors already contributed to the Horizontal Timetable public consultation by Port Polska (CPK) – once again about interregional and long-distance services in Poland.

This raises a wider concern that the future scope of the competitive tender is still not be sufficiently defined. And if so, then direct preparation for procurement does not yet appear to be underway.

➣ This matters because time is running out. The current directly awarded PSO contract to incumbent PKP Intercity expires in 2030 – which has been known since 2021 (!) Where new rolling stock must be procured, other operators need at least three years to prepare for the start of operations.

ALLRAIL Secretary General Nick Brooks says: “CUPT must restart the process and remove the artificial barriers to participation. It should not disqualify the very market players needed to make competitive tendering a success”.