Representatives of Member States and the European Parliament reached a political agreement on 1st October. The text of the agreement still needs to be finalised and it may take a few weeks before it is published.
We’ve been campaigning for years to ensure persons with disabilities have equal access to rail transport.
Yannis Vardakastanis, EDF President, said “We want passengers with disabilities to be able to ‘turn up and go’ and catch a train when they want to, just like everybody else. We will comment on the political agreement as soon as we are given access to its content.”
Press releases from the Council and the European Parliament mention a reduction of the pre-notification period from 48 to 24 hours. However, EDF has not received detailed information about how and when this will be implemented. There are many other provisions that impact passengers with disabilities in the regulation, so we are very keen to see what was agreed.
In 2020, 100 million EU citizens with disabilities and millions of other passengers with reduced mobility still don’t have the right to travel by train when they want to. Almost 60,000 people recently signed an online petition to ask for equal access to rail transport.
Negotiations between representatives of Member States and European Parliament take place behind closed doors and representatives of passengers are not at the table. We will review the agreement as soon as it is published and provide comments in due course.
See more information about our work on the EU Rail Passenger Rights Regulation on our website: http://www.edf-feph.org/rail