The announcement that the Paris–Vienna night train will be cancelled is yet another example of how Europe continues to fail at making cross-border passenger rail work. ALLRAIL fully supports night trains – several of our members operate them successfully. But this cancellation exposes two persistent structural problems that keep Europe’s cross-border rail sector stuck in the past.

ALLRAIL President Elmer van Buuren attended the presentation of the ‘Study on the ecological and overall social balance of night train transport by rail in an intermodal and intramodal comparison’ commissioned by BMDV, the German Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport.

Last week, the independent operator European Sleeper launched a new direct rail service between Belgium and the Alps – stopping in the Netherlands, Germany and Austria along the way.

The ALLRAIL team (Nick Brooks, Katharina Dekeyser, Salim Benkirane and Aurélie Csizmazia) celebrated the launch event of the independent operator European Sleeper's new long-distance service between Belgium and the Alps, crossing several internal EU borders along the way.

In her interview with Swedish news outlet DN, SJ's CEO Monica Lingegård said: “Given the regions’ finances and the need to be careful with taxpayers' money, you need to ensure that you do not compete with commercial traffic unnecessarily. That we let commercial traffic live and grow in a good way”. However, it seems SJ's stance on taxpayer-funded competition changes depending on which side of the subsidy cheque they are on.