As part of the European Year of Rail, the European Commission will charter the special ‘Connecting Europe Express’ train on 2 September. The train will leave Lisbon station and stop in over 100 cities across Europe, linking the Portuguese, Slovenian, and French Presidencies of the Council of the European Union, before reaching its final stop in Paris on 7 October.
From Bordeaux to Athens, via Krakow and Brussels, several events will be organised when the train passes through the station. Conferences on EU infrastructure policy and the role of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) will be held in Lisbon, Bucharest, Berlin, and Bettembourg.
The Connecting Europe Express train is the result of cooperation between the Commission and the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER), European rail operators, infrastructure managers and other partners at European and local level.
Highlighting the remaining lack of interoperability, ‘Connecting Europe Express’ will actually comprise three trains that will pass each other along the route due to the different track gauges in Europe.
The Commission's proposal to make 2021 the European Year of Rail was approved by the Council of the EU on 16 December 2020 (see EUROPE 12625/41).
This decision should make it possible to promote more environmentally friendly modes of transportation by placing the train at the centre of the EU’s thinking on mobility, in order to achieve climate neutrality by 2050, in line with the objectives of the European Green Deal.
See the itinerary of the ‘Connecting Europe Express’: https://bit.ly/3ykJajE (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)