In 2025, the EU rail freight transport performance fell by 1.8%, declining from 375.1 billion tonne-kilometres (tkm) in 2024 to 368.2 tkm, and marking the fourth consecutive year of decline.
Germany remained by far the largest contributor to rail freight transport performance in the EU, with one third of the EU total (33.5%; 123.5 billion tkm). Poland was the second-largest contributor (14.7% of the EU total; 54.3 billion tkm), followed by France (9.3%; 34.4 billion tkm).
This information comes from data on railway freight transport published by Eurostat today. The article presents a handful of findings from the more detailed Statistics Explained article on railway freight transport.
Compared with 2024, rail freight transport performance measured in tonne-kilometres decreased in 16 EU countries, while 8 countries recorded an increase. The largest decreases were recorded in Ireland (-35.2%), Latvia (-18.8%) and Estonia (-17.3%). By contrast, the highest increases were recorded in Greece (+9.3%), Portugal (+8.4%) and France (+6.6%). (....)