By fast train from Warsaw to Berlin and Vienna. The EU has a new high-speed rail plan

The European Commission adopted a plan on Wednesday to accelerate the construction of a pan-European high-speed rail network in the EU. Thanks to it, the journey from Warsaw to Berlin, Vilnius and Vienna will be shortened to four hours.

According to the EC's concept, by 2040 a faster and more extensive railway network is to be created, enabling travel between major cities in the EU at a speed of over 200 km/h.

The Commission announced that the trip from Berlin to Copenhagen will be shortened from seven to four hoursand from Sofia to Athens – from almost 14 to six. New connections, including the Paris-Lisbon route via Madrid, and better connections between the Baltic capitals, are also expected to stimulate tourism and the development of the regions.

Under the plan, a train journey from Warsaw to Vilnius will take four hours in the future, to Riga – six hours, and to Tallinn – less than eight hours.

The Commission also informed that trains in They will reach Berlin in four hours (currently it is about five hours). The train journey from the Polish capital to Vienna will also take about four hours.

The plan assumes: removing cross-border barriers and creating common investment schedules, developing a financing strategy with the participation of public funds and the private sector, improving operating conditions for carriers and strengthening the coordination of infrastructure management at the EU level.

Tomasz Lachowicz, director of the PKP SA Representation in Brussels, told PAP on Tuesday that PKP was a precursor of developing a strategy for the development of high-speed railways at the EU level.

– We talked about it in Brussels already in 2011, when we started working on the so-called project Y (high-speed rail line – PAP) in Poland. This is the right direction because rail is a strategic area of ​​the EU economy, important for its competitiveness and resilience. As PKP and Poland, we have the ambition to play a leading role on the high-speed rail market – he emphasized.

He added that the sources of financing will be key, and in the case of high-speed rail – incentives and facilitations.

– We will analyze it in detail and continue talking to the EC. Today, Poland is already defined by our European partners as the country with the greatest growth potential in the area of ​​railway investments. No less important in the successful development of the entire railway market, because this is how we must look at it, will be the provisions regarding financing in the future EU budget – also taking into account the development of conventional railways and support for the rail freight sector, which remains in a difficult situation throughout the EU. We cannot forget about this, said Lachowicz.

On Wednesday, the Commission also presented a package to stimulate investment in the production of biofuels and e-fuels for air and maritime transport.

Brussels announces that by 2027 it will mobilize at least EUR 2.9 billion from EU funds for this purpose, including EUR 2 billion from the InvestEU program, EUR 300 million from the European Hydrogen Bank and EUR 446 million from the Innovation Fund.

By the end of 2025, it is also planned to launch a pilot project that is expected to attract EUR 500 million for investments in synthetic aviation fuels.

The Commission emphasizes that these initiatives are not only intended to reduce emissions and dependence on fossil fuels, but also to strengthen Europe's position on the global stage.

From Brussels Łukasz Osiński (PAP)

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