The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) has demanded that rail passengers in the EU should get stronger, clearer rights when travelling on journeys that involve more than one operator, including automatic compensation after disruptions and the ability to board alternative services after missed connections.
The EESC adopted opinions at its September plenary on the European Commission’s “Passenger Package”, a set of proposals unveiled in May 2026 covering protection for passengers travelling on single tickets, rail ticketing and multimodal booking, it said in a release on Thursday.
A central recommendation is to protect passengers who buy a journey made up of several rail services through one purchase — a “single ticket” — so their rights apply to the whole trip rather than each individual leg.
If a connection is missed and delays follow, passengers should be allowed to use rail services without restriction for the three hours after the missed connection, or take the first subsequent similar connection.
Rail providers should ensure seats are available even if that means upgrading passengers to a higher class, and a universal insurance mechanism should apply across the system, the EESC added.
The committee also called for clearer upfront information for passengers, including the final price and who is responsible if something goes wrong, and for a single point of contact during disruptions.
Automatic compensation and reimbursement should apply for delays, cancellations or missed connections when a trip is covered by a single ticket, and passengers should not have to submit extra paperwork where operators, ticket vendors or digital platforms already hold the necessary data.
Single booking systems and multimodal platforms
The EESC backed a single, interoperable European booking and ticketing framework to help passengers buy seamless cross-border rail journeys involving multiple operators.
The initiative would remove barriers created by fragmented national booking systems and should be built to enable integrated EU mobility rather than simply linking national online systems, said Dumitru Fornea, rapporteur of the EESC opinion on rail ticketing.
Passengers should also be able to plan, book and pay for journeys that combine different types of transport through online “multimodal” platforms — meaning tools that bring together options such as rail and other modes in one place.
According to the EESC, the European Commission’s proposal does not address the limited availability of multimodal journeys that can be bought through a single ticket, and further measures are needed to make multimodal booking work in practice.
