Are the difficulties of opening up rail competition in France about to claim a new victim? According to the Spanish press, the Renfe is considering closing its French routes in the face of the obstacles put in the way of its development in France by the SNCF and the French State. The discord continues to stem from the Spanish company's difficulties in obtaining authorisations to operate on Lyon-Paris while its AVEs have been serving the Lyon-Barcelona and Marseille-Madrid routes for the last two years.
The carrier was already hoping to obtain traffic rights on this crucial route for the summer of 2024, during the Olympic Games. Once the sporting event was over, Spain's Transport Minister, Oscar Puente, roundly criticised SNCF and France for their double standards, while the Since 2021, SNCF has been present in Spain with Ouigohis low-cost brand, which now has more than 20% of the Spanish high-speed rail market. At the time, Oscar Puente declared that he was " not very optimistic "on the fact that Renfe can take passengers from Paris-Lyon station". in 2024 or even 2025 ". And he is threatening to take the matter to the European Commission.
What future for the Toulouse-Barcelona service?
Having just break the one million passenger barrier in Francethe Renfe is putting pressure on the media to get things moving. Obtaining the authorisations would enable it to increase its passenger numbers and traffic by gaining access to the lucrative route market. Paris-Lyon on which Trenitalia is also steadily gaining momentum. This should help to reduce the financial losses incurred by the costs of launching the service in France.
On the other hand, withdrawing Renfe from France would look bad and tarnish SNCF's image a little more with customers who consider its services to be too expensive. ever-higher prices and are hoping for a real opening up to competition. This decision would also have a negative impact on traffic to cities in the south of France currently served by AVE : Montpellier but also Narbonne and Perpignan, BéziersNîmes and Aix-en-Provence. And possibly Carcassonne and PerpignanRenfe was planning to open the stations on the Toulouse-Barcelona line next April, initially on a seasonal basis.
