On 2 December 2021, the Commission decided to refer Germany to the Court of Justice for failing to apply the European rail safety and interoperability requirements to its regional transport networks, thereby obstructing the completion of the Single European Rail Area.

Directive 2004/49 on safety on the Union’s railways (repealed by Directive 2016/798) lays down provisions to ensure the development and improvement of the safety of the European rail system and improved access to the market for rail transport services, while Directive 2008/57 on the interoperability of the rail system (repealed by Directive 2016/797) establishes the conditions relating to, for each subsystem, the interoperability constituents, the interfaces and procedures, and the conditions of overall compatibility of the Union rail system required in order to achieve its interoperability. Both Directives, therefore, establish an exhaustive list of cases for which Member States may exclude certain specific infrastructure and rail networks from the national implementing measures, which relate to neither the type or geographical scope of operations, nor the distance covered by transport services.

The Commission’s decision follows an unproductive exchange of views with the German authorities, whose explanations were deemed to be unsatisfactory as they did not provide convincing arguments in response to the Commission’s concerns regarding the non-application of the European rail safety and interoperability acquis, which concerns around 16% of the entire German rail network.

Marco Stillo