European railways face a costly paradox. Despite decades of integration policy and harmonised specifications, the sector remains technically fragmented in ways that systematically inflate costs. ERTMS deployment alone is estimated at €74 to €111 billion — yet delivers less interoperability than a truly integrated network should provide. Infrastructure Managers, Railway Undertakings, the European Commission, ERA and the supply industry converged on a single message: the status quo is unsustainable, and a more industrial approach is required.

Today, EIM publishes two complementary documents that translate this consensus into a concrete agenda for action.

The White Paper The Economic Burden of Non-Standardisation of ERTMS in European Railways: The EIM Vision to Reduce Costs for Infrastructure Managers sets out the full analysis of how fragmentation has driven up the cost of European rail modernisation. It examines vendor lock-in, the financial burden on operators, the slow pace of deployment, the risk of repeating ERTMS mistakes with FRMCS, and the structural conditions that allow non-standardisation to persist despite legal mandates and substantial EU funding.

The Position Paper From ERTMS Fragmentation to Standardisation: EIM’s Vision for an Affordable European Network distils the White Paper’s analysis into a concise set of policy recommendations addressed to the EU institutions, Member States and the wider sector.

Both documents rest on two parallel and mutually reinforcing streams:

• A new vision for the “System Pillar” of the next Europe’s Rail Joint Undertaking, embedded within the successor to the Europe’s Rail Joint Undertaking and repositioned as the coordinator of pre-deployment programmes delivering stable, operationally validated and implementation-ready specifications.
• The accelerated completion and adoption of EULYNX as the European reference standard for the interface between central CCS equipment and field elements, securing the investments being made today while the broader CCS+ target architecture matures.

Underpinning both streams is a non-negotiable principle: harmonisation must protect — not penalise — those who have already invested in good faith. Every step forward must be tested against viable migration paths, backwards compatibility wherever technically feasible, and a credible business case acknowledged by those who will ultimately pay.

The time for analysis is over. The time to act together is now.

Read the White Paper here :

Read the Position Paper here :