{"id":2972416,"date":"2026-07-09T10:47:56","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T10:47:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swedtrain.org\/?p=2972416"},"modified":"2026-07-09T11:57:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T11:57:21","slug":"call-on-the-european-institutions-to-ensure-a-successor-to-the-europes-rail-joint-undertaking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swedtrain.org\/en\/call-on-the-european-institutions-to-ensure-a-successor-to-the-europes-rail-joint-undertaking\/","title":{"rendered":"Call on the European Institutions to ensure a successor to the Europe\u2019s Rail Joint Undertaking"},"content":{"rendered":"

This statement was submitted in response to the European Commission\u2019s Call for Evidence under the Horizon Europe initiative.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

>> Participate in the European Commission’s Call for Evidence<\/a>! Just register and send in your statement. The deadline to respond is Tuesday 14 July.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

A dedicated Railway Joint Undertaking is of strategic importance for Europe’s competitiveness, technological sovereignty and green transition<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Rail is strategically important to the European economy and its security. Rail R&I is a key success factor in strengthening the Single Market, delivering efficient zero emission mobility through a harmonized Single European Rail Area (SERA) and Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) and maintaining the competitiveness and global market leadership of the European rail supply industry. Together with stakeholders across the European rail sector, the Swedish Railway Industry calls on the European Institutions to ensure a successor to the Europe\u2019s Rail Joint Undertaking is established within the next European Research Framework Programme. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a strong need to accelerate the digital transformation and enhance resilience of the European railway system. This requires breakthrough innovation in areas such as digitalisation, automation, artificial intelligence, predictive maintenance, advanced signalling, system integration and standardisation. Equally important, it requires the development of solutions that are affordable to deploy across Europe’s diverse railway networks and that can be implemented rapidly and at scale. All the above cannot be achieved by one stakeholder or member state alone but by a successor Rail Joint Undertaking only. Maintaining a standalone rail R&I Joint Undertaking under Article 187 TFEU will ensure long-term private investments can be leveraged, bringing all rail stakeholders together to address in a comprehensive programme the system-level solutions that no single member state or company can deliver alone. A dedicated Joint Undertaking provides far more than funding for R&I. It creates the unique governance structure required to align the entire railway ecosystem behind common objectives, shared priorities and interoperable solutions. It ensures that research is translated into deployable innovations and that investments generate tangible benefits for the European railway system as a whole. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Innovation is not a precursor to deployment but a permanent strategic capability; reducing investment in early stage R&I would directly weaken Europe\u2019s ability to deliver future system transitions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The successor to Europe\u2019s Rail must have a sufficient budget for R&I with a minimum budget of \u20ac3 billion, of which half will come from Horizon Europe and the other half from sector contributions, plus \u20ac15 billion for pre deployment funding via the ECF, national and private investments, to support the needed technological maturity level and accelerating market uptake of flagship European programmes: the completion, validation and deployment of the Future Railway Mobile Communication System (FRMCS); the industrialisation and deployment of Digital Automatic Coupling (DAC) for European rail freight; the next generation of cost-efficient ERTMS and automated train operations; and the development of globally competitive high-speed rolling stock in line with the European High-Speed Rail Action Plan. Such a commitment would maintain and strengthen the competitiveness and global leadership of Europe’s rail supply industry, accelerate innovation, support a sustainable and cost efficient transport system for the European rail operating community, and deliver lasting benefits for European citizens, society and the economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

More information:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Position Paper of European Rail Associations on the Europe\u2019s Rail Joint Undertaking<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joint letter of European Rail Associations to EU-Executive Vice-presidents and Commissioners<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This statement was submitted in response to the European Commission\u2019s Call for Evidence under the Horizon Europe initiative. >> Participate in the European Commission’s Call for Evidence! Just register and send in your statement. The deadline to respond is Tuesday 14 July. A dedicated Railway Joint Undertaking is of strategic importance for Europe’s competitiveness, technological […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":2972421,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2972416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-remissvar-och-stallningstaganden"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swedtrain.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2972416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swedtrain.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swedtrain.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swedtrain.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swedtrain.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2972416"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.swedtrain.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2972416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2972429,"href":"https:\/\/www.swedtrain.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2972416\/revisions\/2972429"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swedtrain.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2972421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swedtrain.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2972416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swedtrain.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2972416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swedtrain.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2972416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}