Six EU Rail Groups Propose Combined Transport Directive Fix

Six European rail and intermodal trade associations sent Brussels a joint compromise proposal on 4 June 2026, asking the European Commission and EU Transport Ministers not to let the Combined Transport Directive revision die. The letter, signed by ERFA, UIRR, CER, UIP, AERRL and UNIFE, lands after months of institutional back-and-forth that has left shippers running rail, road and inland waterway combinations with no clarity on which rules will apply next year, or the year after. If you route freight through combined transport today, this is worth five minutes of your time. Not because it resolves anything, but because it confirms nothing will be resolved soon.

What happened on 4 June 2026

Rail sector bodies in Brussels reiterated their concern about the consequences for rail if the European Commission's proposed Combined Transport Directive is abandoned, with six rail associations calling for work on the other aspects of the directive to continue. Rather than pushing for the full 2023 rewrite, the six associations proposed a narrower fix: keep working on the parts of the file where agreement is possible and set the contested definition issue aside. Their letter asks institutions to continue work on the rest of the proposal now, to achieve the urgently needed modernization wherever agreement is possible, using the technical proposals in the annex as a basis for advancing national policy frameworks, digitalisation, transparency, terminal and last-mile support, and targeted driving-ban exemptions.

This follows a near-death moment for the file. The Commission had listed the CTD revision for withdrawal, but the European Parliament rejected the withdrawal of the Combined Transport Directive revision proposal in late January 2026, though UIRR's Chief Policy Advisor Akos Ersek called it a positive development while noting the sector was "not out of the woods yet". The June letter is essentially the sector trying to keep that reprieve alive before the Council and Parliament lose momentum entirely.

Why the directive has been stuck since 2023

The short answer: nobody can agree on what "combined transport" actually means anymore. The Commission presented a revised proposal in 2023 aiming to overhaul the eligibility conditions of the current Directive, focusing on simplification and digitalisation, but an agreement on the revised proposal by the co-legislators has not been achieved to date. That stalemate pushed the Commission to propose withdrawal, only for Parliament to block it.

This isn't the first time a CTD rewrite has collapsed. In 2017, following a fit-for-purpose evaluation, the Commission made a new proposal to amend the directive, but as the amendments risked reducing support for intermodal operations, the Commission withdrew the proposal in 2020. Two revisions, two collapses, and the operative rulebook is still the one from 1992.

The number that makes this urgent: -4.92%

While Brussels argues over definitions, volume is leaking back to road. Combined transport volumes in Europe are declining, with the first quarter of 2026 seeing a 4.92% drop in the number of consignments according to UIRR data, a trend that started toward the end of 2025 and is mostly connected to widespread engineering blockades on the German network. If your rail or barge legs run through German infrastructure, you've probably already felt this as diversions, delays or last-minute mode swaps back to trucks.

That matters beyond operations. If you've made modal-shift or Scope 3 commitments tied to rail and inland waterway usage, a legislative stalemate combined with infrastructure disruption is actively working against those targets, regardless of what Brussels eventually decides.

What doesn't change for shippers, and what to do about it

No EU-wide harmonized definition, single portal or updated cabotage exemption regime is arriving in 2026, and realistically not in 2027 either. National combined transport rules stay fragmented no matter how the June compromise plays out. That's the part shippers need to plan around now rather than wait out.

• Build corridor-level contingency plans that assume German engineering blockades continue disrupting rail legs, since that's the primary driver behind the Q1 volume drop.
• Pressure-test existing carrier and forwarder contracts for how diversion costs and delay penalties get passed through when a rail leg gets bumped to road mid-contract.
• Track the proposed intermodal waybill concept. Introduction of an intermodal waybill, including its contents and the entity in charge of producing it, would be needed to facilitate the implementation of the eFTI Regulation, which is the first direct link between combined transport paperwork and the eFTI regime shippers already need to prepare for.
• Don't treat the January Parliament vote or the June letter as resolution. Treat both as evidence the file is still alive, not that it's fixed.

Where this hits TMS and carrier-connectivity decisions

Because national CT rules stay fragmented at least through this legislative cycle, you gain more from platforms that abstract away mode- and country-specific booking and documentation logic than from waiting on Brussels to harmonize anything. Transporeon's rail and road booking tools, Alpega's network, MercuryGate/Infios, and Cargoson's multi-carrier interface all take different approaches to the same problem: giving you one place to book and track across modes instead of juggling separate country and carrier logic. None of them make the legal uncertainty disappear, but they reduce how much that uncertainty costs you operationally while it persists.

Timeline of key dates

Bottom line for European shippers

The Combined Transport Directive is neither dead nor fixed. Treat the rest of 2026 and most of 2027 as a continued patchwork period, and build your routing, contracts and TMS setup around flexibility rather than around a Brussels resolution that keeps slipping.