Dr Alan Beroud – President and CEO, PKP S.A. and the PKP Group; Chairman of the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER)

We need to connect the capitals of the European Union with a genuine high–speed master plan, and we cannot keep treating Central and Eastern Europe as the part that gets built last. We need to complete the TEN–T core network, while ensuring financing for the comprehensive and regional network and ensuring an adequate level of maintenance. Investing in rail simply pays off. And we need to keep investing: the International Monetary Fund estimates that each additional one percent of GDP put into rail infrastructure can generate a one–and–a–half percent rise in GDP over four years. Rail is not a cost center. It is one of the best growth investments an Europe can make.

Dr Alan Beroud – President and CEO, PKP S.A. and the PKP Group; Chairman of the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER)

There are years that a railway remembers, and 2026 is one of them. This September, as our industry gathers in Berlin for InnoTrans, PKP marks its special, 100th anniversary. It arrives on the heels of an even larger milestone, 2025 was the bicentenary of the modern railway, two hundred years since the Stockton & Darlington line opened in 1825 and changed how the world moves.

The Polish parliament has declared 2026 the Year of Polish Railways noticing great value and importance of prosperous Railway to the whole living cell of the country, which coincides with Intercity’s biggest public tender for a modern rolling stock, a procurement worth up to EUR 1,6 billion for as many as 42 high-speed double decker trains (with an option to order a total of 72 trains). Thanks to consistent investments, the country is becoming the largest railway investor in Europe. By 2032, Poland will allocate EUR 42 billion to railway development. A hundred years and two hundred years together are an invitation to ask an honest question – what should rail become in the century that starts now?

A group that thinks

beyond its borders

The PKP Group operates as an international business, most visibly through PKP Cargo International, which run freight across Central Europe from their base in the Czech Republic and through subsidiaries in Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia, working with partners from Germany and Austria down to Croatia and beyond. Our freight and passenger businesses live on cross–border flows, on the Baltic–Adriatic and Three Seas corridors, on the north–south and east–west routes that stitch our part of Europe together. We also cannot forget PKP LHS, our broad-gauge line operator,  with an LHS network that runs deep into Poland from eastern border with Ukraine, whose invaluable contribution to cargo flows, safety and to the region’s resilience has been proven time and time again through the uncertain times we have faced since 2022.

A railway that stops thinking at the frontier is a railway that hands market share to the road and the runway. Europe must be coherent in terms of infrastructure development, coherence of investments and interoperability, creating a market of services competitive with other modes of transport. 

As the CER chairman, I intend to advocate for greater funding for railways at the EU level in the new financial perspective 2028-2034 and for a transport market with a level playing field, starting with the "polluter pays" principle and fuel taxation in international traffic of other modes of transport, while also taking into account the implementation of the necessary changes to the ETS - the European Emissions Trading System.

Leading the European conversation

For the past two years, I have had the honor of chairing the UIC – an international organization of over 200 members: railways, research institutions, and other stakeholders in the global rail market. Since the beginning of 2026, I have headed CER, an organization representing European railway companies and infrastructure managers.

The proposal to assume these positions by our partners is a sign of appreciation for the positive changes in the Polish transport market in recent years, PKP's role in international relations, our activity in Brussels at the EU level, and our involvement in the CER and UIC. I accepted this position to bring our region's perspective to the discussion – the experience of a railway that has undergone rapid modernization under time pressure and understands the challenges facing the sector and how to address them. A hundred years ago, PKP was founded, and President Ignacy Mościcki assigned the Polish State Railways a single, yet extremely difficult, task: to merge three separate railway systems into one and create a railway that will form the core of the Polish economy and its mobility. 

The goals arising from the European Transport Agenda, which I value, are clear. Ensuring adequate rail funding at both the EU and national levels remains crucial for the development of our sector. The EU needs to complete the TEN core network, along with its extension to third countries, while also ensuring funding for the maintenance and development of regional lines, where the largest passenger flows accumulate.

Therefore, we must continue investing: according to International Monetary Fund estimates, every additional percent of GDP allocated to rail infrastructure could generate a GDP growth of 1.5 percent over four years. Rail is not merely a cost item. It is one of the best pro-development investments an Europe can make.

The challenges for railways remain the implementation of the roadmap for the integrated ticket and the passenger package published by the European Commission, as well as the development of military mobility through the development of EU-defined military corridors and dual-use solutions on the TEN-T network.

We must also strive to connect the European Union's capitals and largest cities by implementing a comprehensive plan for the construction of a high-speed rail network; We can no longer treat Central and Eastern Europe as a region where such investments are made last. We must be ambitious here, and Poland is undoubtedly one of those countries.

As we know, the European Commission has presented a plan to create an ambitious trans-European high-speed rail network by 2040, enabling travel between major cities at competitive times compared to other modes of transport. While these plans envision significant network expansion and harmonization of technical standards, key initiatives have not yet been fully specified by the Commission. The pace of their implementation and specific financing mechanisms will require further discussions and close cooperation between Member States and EU institutions.

In this context, it is also worth emphasizing the importance of cross-border sections within the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T), which require dedicated financing mechanisms and closer coordination between individual countries. These sections often constitute bottlenecks limiting the capacity of the entire European rail network. Addressing this problem is one of the goals of both the European Commission's proposal to focus on cross-border projects within the future Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) for the 2028-2034 financial perspective, and the recently adopted EU regulation on rail infrastructure capacity.

The energy question

we cannot dodge

Increasing the market share of railways will be much more difficult if the price of the electricity powering our trains is unfavorable to us. Rail is already the most energy–efficient mode of land transport, and European railways were early movers on renewable traction power. Yet operators across the continent are paying far more for traction electricity than they did before the energy crisis, often more than double, while much of that price is still shaped by fossil–fuel generation we do not use.

To strengthen rail transport's position, regulatory changes are necessary within the EU ETS Directive, which align with national and EU strategic documents regarding rail development and, more broadly, the decarbonization of the EU economy. Rail transport generates significant positive externalities that emerge with economies of scale and are observed over the long term.

That is why, through CER, we keep pressing on the same points. Energy–efficient users like railways deserve prioritized access to renewable sources. Electricity taxation must be reformed so that rail competes with aviation and road transport on a level playing field rather than an uphill one.



Moreover, a significant portion of the revenues generated in Europe from carbon pricing should go to a sector that actually contributes to the decarbonisation of transport and the achievement of the EU's 2050 climate goals. Decarbonization without affordable energy is a promise the sector cannot keep. 

Rail as the backbone

of European security

There is a dimension of our work that, a decade ago, few would have put at the top of a railway development agenda, and that today none of us can ignore. On NATO's eastern flank rail needs to be an example of preparedness and be ready for the dual-use. Moving heavy equipment and personnel quickly across long distances is something only rail can do at scale, and Poland sits at the hinge of that movement. Dual–use infrastructure, resilient corridors, and infrastructure projects, for example co-financed by CEF, are the arteries of European deterrence as much as European trade.

Throughout Russia's war against Ukraine, Europe's railways have stood with our Ukrainian colleagues, and Ukrainian railway workers have shown the world what rail means when everything else fails. Building military mobility into how we plan, fund and operate the network is now reality and part of the responsibility of running a railway in Europe. 

Rail as the backbone of European security

There is a dimension of our work that, a decade ago, few would have put at the top of a railway development agenda, and that today none of us can ignore. On NATO's eastern flank rail needs to be an example of preparedness and be ready for the dual-use. Moving heavy equipment and personnel quickly across long distances is something only rail can do at scale, and Poland sits at the hinge of that movement. Dual–use infrastructure, resilient corridors, and infrastructure projects, for example co-financed by CEF, are the arteries of European deterrence as much as European trade.

Throughout Russia's war against Ukraine, Europe's railways have stood with our Ukrainian colleagues, and Ukrainian railway workers have shown the world what rail means when everything else fails. Building military mobility into how we plan, fund and operate the network is now reality and part of the responsibility of running a railway in Europe. 

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