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The European Union Agency for Railways (ERA) has published its 2026 Report on Railway Safety and Interoperability, underlining that rail freight continues to face structural challenges despite progress in safety, technical harmonisation and digitalisation. ERA notes that rail freight has failed to significantly increase its transport performance since 2006, while its modal share fell to around 12% in 2023. This remains a concern for the EU’s climate and modal shift objectives, which depend on a stronger role for rail in European freight transport.

Cross-border operations remain a particular weakness. ERA’s data show that international freight trains continue to face long and unpredictable border transfer times. In more than half of the border sections analysed, average real freight transfer time exceeded one hour in 2025, while average exit delays for freight trains were above 90 minutes on many sections. This confirms that rail freight still suffers from insufficient reliability and poor cross-border coordination compared with passenger services.

The report also points to slow and uneven deployment of ERTMS. By the end of 2024, ETCS deployment on European Transport Corridors had reached only 15%, far from the 2030 target for the TEN-T core network. On-board deployment also remains limited, with only around one quarter of operating tractive vehicles equipped with ERTMS. This continues to limit the prospects for seamless international rail freight operations.

There are, however, some positive developments. ERA notes progress in the implementation of freight telematics, with the Telematics Applications for Freight (TAF) showing a more consistent upward trend between 2019 and 2024. The reduction in national rules for vehicle authorisation also represents an important step towards a more interoperable rail system, although technical exceptions and requests for non-application of interoperability rules remain frequent.

For CLECAT, the report confirms that rail freight competitiveness cannot be improved through infrastructure investment alone. Reliability, cross-border coordination, digital capacity management, interoperable systems and predictable operations remain essential if rail is to become a more attractive option for freight forwarders and logistics service providers.