Madrid (EFE).- Renfe hopes to resume Barcelona-Paris operations in December, after the French public company SNCF -with which it had a joint venture- decided to provide high-speed service between the two countries alone at the end of 2022.
This was stated by the president of Renfe, Isaías Táboas, at a breakfast organized by the Confederation of Directors and Executives (CEDE), in which he specified that the natural scenario for the company’s internationalization is Portugal and France, where he hopes to arrive before in the summer to Lyon and in December in Paris.
A year ago SNCF decided to unilaterally end the joint venture with Renfe that provided the high-speed service between Spain and France, a moment that coincided with the entry of the French company in Spain to operate its low-cost high-speed train , ouigo.
Train drivers and personnel who will operate the Barcelona-Lyon and Madrid-Marseille trains are already being trained and, in the case of Barcelona-Paris, they are working to obtain the safety certificate to work the line.
This will be the first time that Renfe will operate alone in a foreign country, a movement that it hopes to replicate in other markets, especially in Central Europe, taking advantage of the liberalization of public service obligations (OSP).
For this, Renfe has a 50% stake in the Czech Leo Express, with licenses in neighboring countries, “which will allow us to see market opportunities”, while not ruling out specific alliances in other European markets.
The Arab countries also “come to look for us” for their high-speed projects, Táboas said, taking advantage of the experience of the Spanish company in the AVE that connects Medina with Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, which transports more than 350,000 passengers per month (above the figures for the AVE Madrid-Barcelona).
The AVE project in the United States between Houston and Dallas is waiting for the promoters to obtain financing with federal funds, at which time the construction of the infrastructure would begin.
The president of Renfe has assured that they are interested in OSP, because they are projects with legal certainty, scalable and, in general, with little risk, and where they exist “in controlled environments”.