The French rail freight sector is in danger. The European Commission is demanding five billion euros from the sector. Decryption with Isabelle Raymond, head of the Economy and Social department of franceinfo.
The difficulties of the sector are highlighted today by these bickering between France and Brussels: the European Commission is claiming 5 billion euros from Fret SNCF, which according to it is similar to state aid. The executive is trying to find a solution, by relieving the company of part of its activities, its employees, and its turnover. The Minister of Transport, Clément Beaune, also split a platform, published in the newspaper The world, to explain the government’s strategy.
But what this case also shows is the difficulty of sustaining this sector in France, despite the stated ambitions. Ecological transition obliges, the climate law plans to double the share of goods transported by rail, by 2030.
Rail has only lost ground to road over time…
The share of rail has even been precisely halved, dropping from 20% to 10% of freight transport between 2006 and 2019; consequence of the liberalization of the sector, imposed by Brussels. Freight was opened up to competition long before passenger transport. With an inglorious result. Under-investment, aging and insufficiently maintained tracks, difficulty in obtaining train paths, i.e. authorizations to travel, saturation of the network, more than random punctuality, difficulties also for freight wagons to move from From one country to another, because of the different width of the tracks, the problems are numerous, old, and perfectly well identified, according to the players in the sector.
However, there is a demand
The demand is real, because choosing transport by train, rather than road, also allows manufacturers to reduce their carbon footprint. And the demand is pouring in. As proof, the activity of Fret SNCF has been in the green for two years in a row, in 2021 and 2022. Carriers mainly favor so-called “combined” transport, therefore combining several modes: road, rail, boat, with adapted wagons . But the reality is that today the rail network cannot cope.
With 800 km of tracks that have closed in the past five years – the tracks leading directly to factories and warehouses are over 70 years old on average – players in the sector are calling for the creation of multimodal platforms. They also estimate that it will be necessary to put 500 million euros on the table in the coming years to modernize the network. It will be 200 million per year, but only from 2025, promises the Minister of Transport.