With 368.2 billion tonne-kilometres, EU rail freight is now roughly 10% below the 410 billion tkm reached at the 2018 peak.
The latest Eurostat data therefore describe more than another weak year for freight operators. Rail has failed to recover the traffic lost since 2022, while its position against competing modes has not improved. The EU is moving in the opposite direction to its stated ambition of increasing rail freight traffic by 50% by 2030 and doubling it by 2050.
The annual result also cannot be attributed to one particularly poor quarter. Compared with the respective quarter of 2024, performance fell by 0.8% in the first quarter of 2025, 5.0% in the second, 1.4% in the third and 0.3% in the fourth. The second quarter did most damage, but rail finished every quarter below the previous year. In 2022 the annual decline had been 0.6%, followed by 7.1% in 2023, 0.8% in 2024 and another 1.8% in 2025.
A market dominated by Germany and Poland
The European total remains heavily dependent on a small number of large railway markets. Germany generated 123.5 billion tkm in 2025, or 33.5% of the EU figure. Poland contributed 54.3 billion tkm, equal to 14.7%, while France added 34.4 billion tkm, or 9.3%.
Those three countries alone therefore produced 57.5% of EU rail freight performance. Germany and Poland accounted for almost half of the total between them.
Germany recorded 126.3 billion tkm in 2024 and Poland 56.7 billion. Their respective reductions to 123.5 billion and 54.3 billion tkm in 2025 removed approximately 2.8 billion and 2.4 billion tkm from the market. France moved in the other direction: its 6.6% increase added 2.1 billion tkm, the largest absolute increase among EU countries.
Greece recorded the largest percentage increase at 9.3%, followed by Portugal at 8.4%. These are considerably smaller rail freight markets, however. France’s result has greater weight in the European total and shows why percentage changes alone give an incomplete picture of the market.
At the other end, Ireland dropped 35.2%, although from a very small rail freight base. More relevant to the European network were the reductions in Latvia (-18.8%), Estonia (-17.3%), Hungary (-12.5%) and Romania (-12.1%). Eurostat links the continuing decline in Latvia and Estonia primarily to the end of freight traffic with Russia following Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The Baltic railway freight model has changed
The Baltic figures are particularly significant because the decline predates 2025. Rail freight once had an exceptionally large role in Latvia and Lithuania, supported by east-west flows towards Baltic ports.
In 2014, rail represented 58.2% of freight transport performance in Lithuania and 41.7% in Latvia when measured across road, rail, maritime, inland waterways and air. By 2024, these shares had fallen to 30.1% and 17.1%, respectively. Latvia then recorded another 18.8% reduction in rail freight performance in 2025.
This is therefore a change in traffic geography as much as a cyclical reduction in volumes. Eurostat explicitly connects the recent Baltic decline with the loss of Russian traffic. The figures also explain why replacing former east-west volumes with new north-south traffic is such a large challenge for operators and infrastructure managers in this part of Europe.
Almost half of rail freight performance has a cross-border element
Rail freight also remains much more international than passenger rail.
National traffic represented 51.9% of EU rail freight performance in 2025. International loadings accounted for 18.6%, international unloadings for 18.0% and transit for another 11.5%. Taken together, international and transit movements represented 48.1% of rail freight tonne-kilometres.
The differences between individual networks are substantial. International traffic represented 86.1% of railway freight performance in the Netherlands, with international loadings alone accounting for 62.8%. Eurostat points to Rotterdam and its sea-rail flows as a major reason.
Denmark is an even clearer example of the importance of transit: 86.0% of its rail freight performance in 2025 was transit traffic. Hungary, Austria and Slovakia each recorded transit shares of around 39%. By contrast, national traffic represented 93.2% of Finnish rail freight, 84.9% in Spain and 79.2% in Romania.
For the rail freight business, these figures put the importance of European corridors into perspective. Nearly half of transport performance depends on traffic that either crosses a border or passes through a country. Capacity allocation, interoperability and disruption on one network consequently affect traffic well beyond the country concerned.
Bulk and industrial commodities still carry much of the railway
The commodity structure also shows how closely railway freight remains tied to Europe’s industrial economy (measured by rail freight tonne-kilometres):
Metal ores and other mining products : 12.2%
- Coke and refined petroleum products: 10.4%
- Basic metals and fabricated metal products: 9.1%
- Agricultural products: 6.7%
- Chemicals: 5.8%
- Coal, lignite, crude petroleum and natural gas: 5.2%
Measured by tonnes rather than distance, ores had an even larger 15.1% share. Coke and refined petroleum products represented 10.1%, basic metals 9.6% and coal and related products 9.2%.
The numbers underline rail’s continued exposure to heavy industry and bulk flows. They also need some caution: Eurostat notes that a high proportion of freight is reported as «unidentifiable goods», which limits conclusions about the complete commodity mix.
More tonnes do not necessarily mean more railway work
A useful detail in the 2025 dataset is the difference between tonnes carried and tonne-kilometres performed.
Spain, Luxembourg, Finland and Sweden all transported more tonnes by rail than in 2024 while recording fewer tonne-kilometres. This means the average distance covered by the freight fell. Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands and Slovakia showed the opposite combination — lower tonnage but higher transport performance.
For operators, wagon lessors and infrastructure managers, the distinction is important. A tonne moved 50 km and a tonne moved 500 km appear equally in tonnage statistics but generate very different train kilometres, rolling stock utilisation and infrastructure demand.
Austria also remains one of Europe’s most rail-intensive freight economies when measured against population. Luxembourg transported 10.7 tonnes by rail per inhabitant in 2025, Austria 10.5 and Lithuania 8.5. Ireland stood at only 0.03 tonnes and Greece at 0.06 tonnes per inhabitant.
Modal shift is still missing from the European total
The longer-term modal data are perhaps the most difficult part of the figures for the rail sector.
In 2024, rail accounted for 5.4% of total EU freight transport performance when road, maritime, inland waterways and air are included. That was 0.3 percentage points less than in 2014. Road reached 25.7%, an increase of 3.3 percentage points over the same decade. Rail’s share fell in 17 of the 25 EU countries with railways between 2014 and 2024.
The direction continued in the separate 2025 road statistics. Road freight transport by EU-registered vehicles increased 0.9% to 1,886 billion tkm, while railway freight fell 1.8%. These two annual figures should not be used directly to calculate modal share because the basic road series follows vehicle registration while rail follows territorial movements; Eurostat territorialises road traffic separately for its modal-split calculations. The trend nevertheless gives rail operators little evidence of a shift away from road in 2025.
There are countries where rail already has a much stronger position. In 2024, its share of total freight performance reached 30.1% in Lithuania and 30.0% in Austria. Slovakia stood at 29.8%, Slovenia at 27.7%, Hungary at 25.8% and Poland at 21.0%. No EU country, however, had rail as its largest freight mode under Eurostat’s five-mode comparison.
France provides one positive signal in an otherwise weak 2025 result. Yet the European total will remain difficult to turn around while Germany and Poland are losing billions of tonne-kilometres and the Baltic freight market is still adjusting to the loss of former eastern flows.
For a sector expected to grow 50% by 2030, the immediate benchmark is considerably more modest: stop four years of contraction and return above the 2018 peak.
