{"id":336472,"date":"2025-12-24T20:26:25","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T10:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/?p=68306"},"modified":"2025-12-24T20:26:25","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T10:26:25","slug":"european-commission-approves-rescue-loan-for-lineas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=336472","title":{"rendered":"European Commission approves rescue loan for Lineas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The European Commission (EC) approved a rescue loan for 61 million euros from the Belgian government to rail freight operator Lineas. \u201cBelgium has committed to presenting a restructuring plan if the rescue loan is not reimbursed\u201d, the Commission said.<\/strong><br \/>\n<span id=\"more-68306\"><\/span>The Belgian government notified the EC about the rescue loan <a href=\"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/business\/2025\/07\/17\/lineas-to-get-61-million-euros-from-belgian-government\/\"  rel=\"noopener\">last July<\/a> \u201cto address Lineas Group&#8217;s short-term liquidity needs for six months\u201d. The company has in fact been struggling financially over the past few years due to a drop in demand for rail freight services, especially in key industries such as steel and automotive.<\/p>\n<h2>Previous schemes cleared as well<\/h2>\n<p>In addition to approving the 61 million euros scheme, the Commission also analysed two previous financial injections provided to Lineas. The first one saw <a href=\"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/business\/2024\/05\/31\/belgian-regions-and-banks-to-provide-46-million-euros-to-save-lineas\/\"  rel=\"noopener\">46 million euros<\/a> coming from Belgian regions and banks in 2024. The second one entailed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/railfreight\/2023\/05\/11\/20-million-for-lineas-to-implement-new-strategy\/\"  rel=\"noopener\">20 million euros<\/a> coming from the company\u2019s main shareholders (the Belgian government and French investment fund Argos Wityu) in 2023. \u201cThe Commission concluded that neither injection qualified as State aid\u201d, a note from the EC said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The European Commission (EC) approved a rescue loan for 61 million euros from the Belgian government to rail freight operator Lineas. \u201cBelgium has committed to\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[72,1879,3497,47],"tags":[12634],"class_list":["post-336472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-european-commission","category-lineas","category-rail-news","tag-railfreight"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=336472"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":336473,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336472\/revisions\/336473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=336472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=336472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=336472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}