France’s SNCF faces little international competition.
With one exception, namely that of Trenitalia France, its routes are operated either as joint ventures (JVs) or with operators with whom SNCF is a majority shareholder.
Now France’s Les Echos reports that SNCF wants to cancel its JV with Renfe of Spain. It will end in December 2022.
Officially the reason being given is a “lack of profitability”.
Besides that it appears both operators want to go their own way.
Renfe wants to extend its network into France while SNCF wishes to do likewise in Spain.
All this is good news for travellers because it will lead to refreshed services.
And it comes at a time when France is mulling the cost of funding SNCF, as Business Traveller France reports today.
Currently their most important SNCF/Renfe JV is the high-speed (HS) Paris-Barcelona link.
But despite huge sums being spent on this HS line the market has not grown thanks to fierce air competition.
The HS link was completed a couple of years ago. Today there is only a single daily train taking six hours 40 minutes and operated by SNCF rather than Renfe.
Clearly as we now see with Trenitalia operating Paris-Milan, the [Paris-Barcelona] market is seeing a boost from competition.
In addition SNCF is facing “slightly tense” relations with Renfe, reports Les Echos.
That is because next year SNCF wants to offer customers HS rail links to Madrid via Barcelona, whereby customers taking its TGV would change in Barcelona onto Ouigo ES for Madrid.
For its part Renfe wants to expand in France.
More crucially Renfe wants to compete with incumbent Eurostar on the prime Paris-London route.
SNCF is a majority shareholder in Eurostar, which has held a cross-channel monopoly since 1994.
Some long-standing passengers will be hoping Eurostar will finally get some competition.
But it will not be an easy task for Renfe, as Germany’s Deutsche Bahn discovered some years ago.
