On Monday, rail sector specialists spent a six-hour train ride attempting to figure out how to fix a network that's fragmented, expensive and arguably holding back European growth.
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00:00A high-speed master plan by 2050 to connect all major European cities.
00:06The aspirations of Europe's rail sector aboard this train.
00:10During a six-hour journey from Brussels to Berlin,
00:13conversations flow on how to get the continent
00:16on a par with Asia's formidable rail network.
00:19Green MEP Tillie Metz says it's doable.
00:22I don't think it's a European. It's really a question of political will.
00:27Because the money would be there.
00:29And we just need a coherent approach, as I say.
00:33We need to come out of national egoism.
00:38Today there's a patchwork of rail networks in the EU.
00:41And studies say European countries have spent 15 trillion euros
00:45on road infrastructure and not enough on rail.
00:48Even industry says a high-speed network could create millions of jobs
00:52and slam CO2 emissions by five billion tons.
00:55So why is it not happening?
00:57We have to have a more efficient net.
01:00We want that the Commission allows us to give subsidies to trains
01:07so that we can have a fairer level of competition between trains and planes.
01:14Today it's unfair.
01:16We have to have a better level playing field between the two modes of transport.
01:22And we have to support the greenest one, which is the train.
01:25Today air travel is more popular than rail.
01:28It's cheaper and easier to buy a plane ticket.
01:31John Worth, this rail expert, says the challenges are immense.
01:35For different political reasons, crossing borders by train is hard.
01:39Because it's not the priority either of national governments
01:42or of national railway companies on those international connections.
01:45And that's why I want a bit more political action from the European Union
01:48to say, hey, these are the problems that you need to fix.
01:50All eyes on the incoming European Commissioner for Transport
01:53to see can he fix these problems and prioritise investment, decarbonisation
01:58and cross-border connectivity.
02:00Maeve McMahon, Euronews, Brussels.