ONE of Europe’s leading transport civil servants has offered a frank reminder of the continent’s poor track record of installing ETCS, warning that the target to install the standardised signalling system on 50,000km of the European Union (EU) core network by 2030 looks unlikely to be met.

Speaking at the 2026 ERTMS conference organised by the European Union Agency for Railways (ERA) in Valenciennes, France, on April 21-23, Kristian Schmidt, land transport director of the Directorate General for Mobility and Transport (DG Move) at the European Commission (EC) said that only 10% of the TEN-T network representing 12,400km has been equipped so far, well short of the target. In addition, just 19% of the European fleet has been fitted with ETCS.

That this is not much of an achievement in the 30 years since the first specifications for ERTMS were agreed and is in stark contrast with the deployment of GSM-R, the telecommunications element of ERTMS, which had a rapid rollout.

While small member states, such as Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Slovenia, are making good progress with installing ETCS on their networks, with Belgium and Luxembourg having completed installation, all but two of these countries are isolated from one another creating ETCS islands. “We can’t have a situation where the first movers are penalised because their neighbours haven’t adopted ERTMS,” Schmidt told delegates.

As Matthias Ruete, the European Commission’s (EC) ERTMS coordinator, pointed out, there are more than 200 cross-border rail connections in Europe, but only 20 have ERTMS on both sides of the border, which flies in the face of one of the main objectives for ETCS: to improve interoperability in Europe. He suggested creating a European deployment manager to improve coordination and pool national and EU funding for projects.

Deployment of ETCS on the two largest rail networks in the EU, namely France and Germany, has made very little progress, with only 15% of the French TEN-T network equipped and just 5% of the German network. However, France is now equipping the Paris - Lyon high-speed line with ETCS to increase capacity on this very busy line and plans to deploy ETCS on further lines. In Germany, the recent creation of a new ERTMS Coordination Office by the Federal Ministry of Transport (BMV) is an encouraging development.

Schmidt listed some of the reasons for the slow rollout of ETCS. These include a lack of standardisation, fragmented national implementation plans, the high cost of trackside upgrades and a slow and complex approval process, and a doubling in the cost of onboard retrofits and upgrading for rolling stock between 2018 and 2023. The cost of retrofitting a locomotive is now as high as €900,000 while upgrading a locomotive costs up to €400,000.

Solutions to these challenges include:

  • having mature Technical Specifications for Interoperability (TSI) with harmonisation of ETCS in depth and scope
  • reducing the variability of ETCS components to have more standardised products to reduce costs
  • implementing predictable partnerships to improve collaboration and commitment
  • introducing clear migration plans
  • accelerating the trackside approval process with more resources for ERA
  • simplification of ETCS deployment and removal of Class B conventional signalling systems to reduce complexity
  • eliminating national specifications which add cost, and
  • introducing a common template for ETCS procurement.

“Rail is doing well, but ERTMS risks becoming the weak link if we don’t accelerate,” Schmidt said.