A new step in the liberalization of hexagonal rail: the Spanish company Renfe will launch its high-speed trains on the French market on July 13, becoming the second foreign rail carrier to compete with SNCF, after Trenitalia since 2021.
Renfe’s AVE trains, the Spanish equivalent of the TGV, will run on the Barcelona-Lyon line from this date, then on the Madrid-Marseille line from July 28, with many intermediate stops in both Spain and France. , the company announced on Monday. In France, the Spanish AVEs will serve the stations of Valence, Aix-en-Provence, Avignon, Nîmes, Montpellier, Béziers, Narbonne and Perpignan, specified during a press conference the railway group, which plans to put its tickets in sale on Wednesday June 21.
From Lyon to Spain for 29 euros
The objective is to become “a reference operator on the whole of French territory”, declared, in French, the president of Renfe Raul Blanco, qualifying this arrival on the French market as a “historic day” for the group of Spanish public group.
The cheapest tickets will be on sale from 9 euros for connections between French stations. For a trip between Spain and Marseille or Lyon, the first price will be 29 euros and for a trip between Spain and Narbonne or Montpellier, 19 euros.
Aiming for Paris doesn’t scare me
As for Trenitalia, SNCF Réseau should grant reductions to Renfe on tolls (train paths), in order to encourage the establishment of new players on the market. This temporary benefit – two years plus one optional for Trenitalia – allows it to offer ultra-attractive rates, as the Spanish company does.
Ultimately, “our objective is to arrive in Paris”, specified Raul Blanco, saying that we are aiming for a service to the French capital “in 2024”. “Taking the Spanish athletes to the Olympic Games (in Paris) on board a Renfe train would be a beautiful dream,” he said. Renfe also aims to “provide its services in France as a public service provider” and plans to launch, elsewhere in Europe, “new international connections”.
Rail liberalization
Renfe announced in mid-January, while carrying out its first test on the Barcelona-Lyon line, that it wanted to enter the French market “before the summer”. Since then, it has multiplied empty trips in order to train its drivers in the specificities of the French network. Renfe, which initially wanted to launch in France in 2020, has long criticized the brakes imposed on its entry into this market, denouncing a lack of reciprocity from the French authorities, the SNCF having launched its low-cost TGV Ouigo in Spain in the spring. 2021.
These criticisms were rejected by France, which cited problems with the approval of non-compliant rolling stock and signaling to justify these delays. The arrival of Renfe opens a new chapter in the liberalization of French rail, desired by Brussels in order to increase competition between operators and lower the price of TGV tickets, often considered very high by users.
No public aid
In France, Trenitalia was the first foreign company to take advantage of this opening, offering a service between Paris and Milan via Lyon from December 2021. A fourth operator is on track to operate in France: the public transport operator Arriva, a subsidiary of the German Deutsche Bahn, which wishes to provide a link between Paris and Groningen, in the north of the Netherlands, via Brussels and Amsterdam. Arriva wants to open this line in the summer of 2026.
These companies operate under the “open access” model, ie they do not benefit from public aid. This requires being solid and experienced, the operators having to supply rolling stock, recruit railway workers, set up a sales system and obtain slots (traffic slots) to run the trains.