When passengers combine several operators in one journey, they are often not guaranteed full passenger rights. Yet, more and more companies are operating rail services in the EU. The regulations proposed in the EU Passenger Package in May 2026 represent a major opportunity to fix this situation, but there is more work to do to guarantee full passenger rights are secured across the EU.
Our report demonstrates that, currently, European rail passengers are not sufficiently protected and are still exposed to financial burdens when they miss a rail connection between operators. We show that, despite European regulation and industry schemes, passengers missing a connection still have to buy expensive last-minute tickets or pay for their accommodation themselves. Harmonised EU regulation is needed to guarantee rail passenger protection across a broad range of journeys involving several operators.
The EU Passenger Package represents a major step forward in passenger rights protection. These proposals aim to guarantee protection for passengers who hold a ‘single ticket’, including assistance for food and accommodation costs, reimbursement, rerouting and compensation. This would apply to both international and domestic journeys, including those involving multiple operators. This is a major win for passengers.
However, the package has shortcomings for passengers. The proposed regulations define a single ticket as a journey booked in a single transaction. Passenger rights are therefore directly tied to the booking possibilities on ticketing platforms. The ‘hosting obligations’ from the EU Passenger Package will mandate dominant ticketing platforms to display or resell tickets from any operator running services in the country where they are dominant. Previously, we showed that booking possibilities from market-dominant platforms were currently insufficient. Our new analysis reveals that due to a limited geographical scope, the hosting obligations will barely improve this situation: 43% of the rail equivalents of Europe’s most flown routes will remain difficult or impossible to book as a single ticket on these platforms, limiting the coverage of improved passenger rights.
For these new regulations to fully deliver, we call for expanding the geographical scope of the hosting obligation from the EU Passenger Package. Expanding this scope would in turn expand passenger rights coverage and encourage modal shift. We also call on EU institutions to extend the definition of a single ticket to journeys booked via a single platform, rather than strictly limiting the definition to a single transaction. Otherwise, there is a risk that these new regulations will create unharmonised, unequal rights for passengers, depending on where and when they book their tickets.