State Aid to Railways in Europe

Over the last twenty years, the EU Commission has paid a lot of attention to the monitoring and comparison of state aid in many sectors of the economy, however, rail transport seems to represent a relevant exception, despite having been the major beneficiary of the aid in recent years, with a share higher than 40% of its total value in the Union, excluding those related to the economic crisis (and equal to nearly 60% in Italy). A consequence of the limited attention paid to state aid to the rail sector is that it is stationary over time in relation to EU GDP, contrasting with the tendency to lower it, which has instead occurred in all of the other remaining sectors and led to its reduction by half (and reduced to a quarter in Italy) in relation to GDP since the Commission began its systematic monitoring at the start of the 90s.