The French Competition Authority (l’Autorité de la concurrence) has officially published its observations on a comprehensive report by the Transport Regulatory Authority (l’ART) concerning the opening of France’s rail market to competition. The competition watchdog strongly backed l’ART‘s findings, warning that structural barriers continue to protect the historic legal monopoly of state-owned operator SNCF.
The dual-agency review highlights that while initial phases of open-access rail competition have successfully driven up passenger traffic, lower ticket prices, and better service quality, new market entrants are being suffocated by high operational hurdles.
The primary barrier identified by the regulators is France’s exceptionally steep track-access fees, which are among the highest in Europe and account for up to 60% of an independent rail company’s revenue on certain routes. Both authorities agree that targeted reductions in these tolls are a critical lever to stabilize fragile routes and incentivize external operators to enter the market.
Beyond financial constraints, the Competition Authority raised alarms regarding severe conflict-of-interest risks embedded within the French rail model. Because the network manager (SNCF Réseau), station manager (SNCF Gares & Connexions), and historical operator (SNCF Voyageurs) all belong to the same integrated public group, cross-subsidies and biased network access remain prominent threats. To cultivate industry confidence, the watchdog supported expanding independent safeguards to strip SNCF of its unilateral control over train path scheduling, engineering allocations, maintenance site access, and track maintenance programming.
Procuring high-speed rolling stock poses an additional crisis for new market entrants. A strained global industrial supply chain, convoluted national homologation and testing procedures, and technical over-specifications have triggered a severe train shortage in France. To bypass this, the Authority renewed its call for public bodies to establish rolling stock leasing companies—similar to structures utilized in rail freight—and demanded that SNCF formalize open, non-discriminatory calls for interest whenever it retires older trains from service.
Finally, the watchdog emphasized the importance of granting digital ticketing platforms universal access to rail data interfaces to allow third-party sales. Warning that a failure to dismantle these systemic obstacles could cause France’s freshly opened rail network to transition directly from a regulated state monopoly to an unregulated de facto private monopoly, the Competition Authority formally recommended that the French government reinforce l’ART‘s human, financial, and legal prerogatives to police the market effectively.
