The performance of the EU rail freight sector fell by 1.8% in 2025 compared to 2024. The EU’s statistics agency Eurostat published those data on Monday 14 September. 2025 marks the fourth consecutive year of decline.
Eurostat measured rail freight performance in terms of tonne-kilometres. In 2025, rail freight recorded 368.2 billion tonne-kilometres (375.1 billion in 2024). The industry has been in decline since 2021, when covid-19 restriction relaxations give it a 9.1% boost to 409.6 billion tonne-kilometres.
Not all EU Member States performed equally. Ireland (-35.2%), Latvia (-18.8%), Estonia (-17.3%), Hungary (-12.5%), and Romania (-12.1%) recorded the worst performance declines. The Irish drop likely has to do with infrastructure construction in the Port of Dublin. Estonia and Latvia continue to suffer from a loss of transit goods from Russia.
By contrast, Greece (+9.3%), Portugal (+8.4%) and France (+6.6%) outperformed their fellow EU countries. Overall, 16 countries recorded decreases in performance, while 8 saw improvements.
Despite the many disruptions on its rail network, Germany remained the largest rail freight market in Europe. It saw a total of 124 billion tonne-kilometres of rail freight operations in 2025. Poland and France followed with 54 and 34 billion tonne-kilometres, respectively. A near match for Germany, albeit not an EU Member State, was Ukraine with 99 billion tonne-kilometres. However, Kyiv also recorded a 12.5% decline.
The picture in tonnes
Similarly to the performance measured in tonne-kilometres, eight EU countries grew the volume of rail freight in tonnes. 16 of them recorded decreases. Germany performed worst of all in absolute terms: it lost 9.6 million tonnes between 2024 and 2025. This is not entirely surprising, given the start of the major rail infrastructure overhaul in the second half of 2024. Poland and Hungary followed with 8.0 and 5.7 million tonnes lost respectively.
In relative terms, Ireland registered the biggest drop (-38.1%), followed by Croatia (-21.2%), Latvia (-14.3%), Hungary (-12.5%), and Denmark (-11.3%).
By contrast, Finland (+9.5% or +2.5 million tonnes), Luxembourg (+9.1% or +0.6 million tonnes), and Portugal (+8.0% or +0.6 million tonnes) did comparatively well in tonnage terms. Other countries that moved more freight by rail include Sweden, Spain, Czechia, France and Austria.
The new king of rail freight
Beyond the familiar tonne-kilometre and tonnage figures, Eurostat published “tonnes per inhabitant” data as well. Going beyond the absolute figures, this gives some insight in the size of rail freight relative to the population count. From this viewpoint, Germany is no longer the king of European rail freight. Rather, it is Luxembourg that takes the crown.
The graph below also illustrates the dramatic fall of Baltic rail freight, where trains were hugely important up until the war in Ukraine.