Disclaimer: The ETF position is provided in the English original version of this text. ETF is not responsible for possible mistranslations by the automatic translation tools.
The European Transport Workers’ Federation is launching a new campaign to defend European rail freight and the tens of thousands of workers whose jobs depend on it. The campaign’s central argument is straightforward: rail freight needs to be treated like the public service that it is.
What Is Happening to Rail Freight in Europe?
For two decades, European policy has pursued the liberalisation of rail freight — opening the sector to private competition in the expectation that market forces would deliver better, more efficient services. The results have been disappointing. Rail freight’s share of total transport has declined rather than grown. Services that are essential for smaller businesses and specialised industries have been progressively cut, because private operators cannot make sufficient profit from them. And working conditions across the sector have deteriorated as companies compete to reduce costs.
The most immediate crisis concerns a type of rail freight known as Single Wagon Load transport — the flexible service that allows customers to send individual wagons rather than filling an entire train. Think of it as the difference between a scheduled bus and a private charter: SWL is accessible, flexible, and essential for the many businesses and industries that don’t have enough cargo to fill a whole train. It currently accounts for between 25 and 30% of all European rail freight.
Private operators are withdrawing from SWL services across Europe, because the complex infrastructure and coordination it requires make it commercially unattractive. The consequences are severe. An estimated 45 million tonnes of cargo per year risk being forced off trains and onto roads. Tens of thousands of rail freight jobs are at risk. And the loss of these services would represent a significant blow to Europe’s climate ambitions.
Why This Is a Climate Issue
The environmental case for rail freight is compelling. One freight train replaces approximately 52 trucks on the road. Rail transport generates four times less CO2 than road freight, ten times fewer fine dust particles, and fifteen times less nitrogen oxide. When cargo moves from rail to road, the climate pays the price.
If current trends continue, the displacement of SWL freight to roads could translate into millions of additional tonnes of CO2 per year across Europe. In Austria alone — where 60% of Single Wagon Load transport depends on services that are now under threat — the impact would be approximately 40,000 additional truck journeys per day and two million tonnes of additional CO2 per year.
This is not the direction European climate policy should be taking.
Why This Is a Workers’ Issue
Rail freight employs hundreds of thousands of workers across Europe: drivers, shunters, wagon inspectors, maintenance crews, and many others. These are skilled, essential jobs that keep the European economy moving. Liberalisation has put pressure on wages and working conditions across the sector, and the current trajectory threatens to eliminate tens of thousands of these positions entirely.
Workers deserve job security, decent pay, and safe working conditions. Public ownership of rail freight is the most reliable way to guarantee that, because it replaces short-term profit-seeking with long-term investment in people and infrastructure.
Why This Is an Industrial Issue
Rail freight is not only a matter of environmental or employment policy. It is central to the functioning of key European industries. The steel industry transports approximately 50% of its products by rail — in many cases because the size or weight of those products makes road transport impractical. The chemical industry depends on rail for the transport of certain hazardous goods that are legally required to go by train. Flexible SWL services are also essential for small and medium enterprises that need rail access without the volume to fill an entire train.
The loss of comprehensive rail freight services would create real disruption for European industry and undermine the continent’s economic competitiveness.
What We Are Fighting For
The ETF is calling for long-term public investment in comprehensive networks, ideally in public hands. This means maintaining not only the profitable long-distance corridors but the feeder lines, marshalling yards, and local connections that make the whole system work. It means recognising the real value of rail freight to society — in climate terms, in employment terms, and in industrial terms. And it means creating a level playing field between transport modes, ensuring that the full social and environmental costs of road transport are properly accounted for.
Rail freight worked when it was publicly owned and managed as a public service. It can work again.
How You Can Help
Follow the campaign and share the message. The more people understand what is at stake — for workers, for the climate, for European industry — the more pressure there is on policymakers to act.
Demand action in your own country. Contact your government representatives and MEPs. Ask them where they stand on public ownership of rail freight.
Follow #SaveRailFreight and #PublicRailFreight for updates, evidence, and workers’ stories throughout the campaign.
