The French of Ouigo make fun, even more, of the Spanish Óscar Puente, Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility,… and above all in his city (Valladolid). He does this by offering bills (specifically, 10,000) at a price of 1 euro! During two weeks.
With this great offer, the French low-cost high-speed train, owned by the French railway operator and manager SNCF, has inaugurated its trips from Madrid to Segovia and Valladolid this Thursday. They do so at a time that is not trivial: in the middle of the war with Minister Puente, who even threatened to go to the CNMC for selling tickets at a loss, and after mocking him by boasting about “unmatched” rates a few days ago. And be careful, all this, while SNCF hinders the arrival of Renfe to Paris, which is no longer expected in the summer, but rather before the end of the year, so it will not be able to take advantage of the Olympic and Paralympic Games that will be held in the French capital.
Both on the issue of demanding reciprocity from France in railway matters and on complaining about the low prices of Ouigo and Iryo (high-speed train that is owned by Ilsa, a company formed by Trenitalia – whose owner is the Italian state entity state Railways– and the Spanish companies Air Nostrum and Glovalvia), and without serving as a precedent, Minister Puente is absolutely right. His complaint about the low prices of Ouigo and Iryo is due to the fact that they sell at a loss and take away travelers from Renfe (and therefore, its low cost subsidiary, Hello), something that makes them lose “a tremendous amount of money” in our country and that drags Renfe into “those bad results.”
It is removing the dirty hands of the State from a service and improves quality and lowers prices. Fascism in vein.
— Willy Tolerdo (@WillyTolerdoo) April 18, 2024
At the same time, Puente has criticized that time and again, Ouigo and Iryo protest the high fees they pay to Adif, the Spanish railway manager, for the use of the tracks and infrastructure. However, the Valladolid minister emphasizes that both French and Italian-Spanish knew the conditions of high speed when they decided to enter Spain to compete with Renfe, for the sake of railway liberalization by European order that our country was quick to comply with much more than others. What’s more, Puente himself has stressed that the Spanish operator had to face the entry of two competitors and not one, as has happened in other countries, in his intervention at the Wake Up, Spain! event. organized by El Español, Invertia and Disruptores.
Whatever he says, but the fact is that Puente, so wild with the Spanish opposition, does not dare to veto Ouigo in Spain… and that, after the fact, the courts and regulatory bodies decide. That’s what the French would have done.
Puente highlights that fees paid to Adif fell by 23% in 2021 and have since been frozen, and are also lower than those paid in France and Germany. What’s more, in France they have risen 8% this year…
There, the Minister of Transport not only spoke about the “Spanishness” of Talgo and road tolls, but also recalled that Spanish high speed was liberalized in 2019 and that both Ouigo and Iryo knew the rules of the game (in reference to the fees paid to Adif) from the beginning of the match and which extend for ten years. Likewise, he wanted to emphasize that these fees fell by 23% in 2021 and that since then they have been frozen, but “if we applied the CPI, in real terms, the fees that Adif charges to operators would be 40% lower than in 2019.” Furthermore, he said that Spaniards are shorter than those in France and Germany, who “are taller”, in fact, in France they have risen 8% this year…
Puente recalled that in Spain basically public companies from three different countries are competing, so their losses end up having to be faced by their respective public treasuries. If this is so, the costs of high speed in the Member States are being borne by taxpayers, and it doubts that the model of the European Union with its liberalization of high speed rail (which is a commercial service) was that of subsidize high-speed services via taxes, because in principle what the EU wanted to do was lower prices and improve services.