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Aspirations to double Europe’s intermodal market share by 2050 received a major blow by the European Court of Auditors (ECA), which described the plan as ‘unrealistic’ in a report published on 27 March. The court pointed to ‘serious deficiencies’ surrounding funding, harmonisation of EU regulations, lack of visibility on existing and required rail infrastructure and the dominance of road freight. It added that targets aimed at increasing the share of sustainable modes of transport were ” unrealistic, as the underlying assumptions were not based on robust simulations of how much modal shift could actually be achieved”.  

The report, entitled “Intermodal freight transport: EU still far from getting freight off the road”, stressed that there were regulatory and infrastructure barriers preventing intermodal freight transport from competing on equal grounds with road transport. 

“Decarbonising transport is at the core of the EU goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as laid out in the European Green Deal,” said Annemie Turtelboom, the ECA member who led the audit. “Although intermodality is a key tool in that effort, the EU freight transport is not on the right track.” The auditors found that there was no dedicated EU strategy on intermodal freight transport. Intermodality is rather part of broader strategies on greening freight transport, which set specific quantitative targets for the increased use of rail and inland waterways. But since these targets are non-binding, the different EU countries set their own. These national targets are not necessarily comparable and aligned with the EU goals. It is therefore impossible to assess whether combined national efforts are enough to meet the EU’s overall modal shift objectives. In any case, the targets the EU set for 2030 and 2050 (ultimately doubling rail traffic and increasing waterway use by 50 %) are simply unrealistic, according to the auditors.

The report stressed that some EU rules limit the attractiveness of intermodal transport, highlighting that the current version of the Combined Transport Directive was outdated and ineffective. Other EU regulations as well, especially those governing road transport, have undermined the aim of incentivising intermodality, which added to the capacity management and interoperability issues. The auditors suggested that the revision of the Trans-European Network for Transport (TEN-T) regulation could help improve the situation.

In response, the European Commission published  replies to  the recommendations of the European Court of Auditor, indicating that, even if there are no specific EU targets for intermodal transport, the Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy defines objectives and measures for transport policy to achieve the EU’s climate neutrality objective by 2050. It also noted that information gaps regarding existing and future intermodal terminals will be addressed through revisions of relevant directives and legislative proposals.

CLECAT largely supports the observations of the ECA study, including those related to the capacity limitation of rail infrastructure. The new Rail Capacity Management Regulation, as part of the Greening Freight Package, should address these shortcomings. Equally, the current Combined Transport Directive is outdated and counterproductive, but it should be noted that the European Commission tried several times already to rectify these. It is hoped that the new proposal on intermodal transport will address these shortcomings.

The full ECA’s report can be found here.