Europe's sleeper train revival was dealt a setback on Monday, September 29, as operators said services linking Paris with Vienna and Berlin will end on December 14 after France cut vital subsidies. The Paris-Vienna and Paris-Berlin routes had been relaunched in 2021 and 2023 to fanfare as part of a wider effort to bring back night trains as a lower-emission alternative to short-haul flights.
They attracted steady demand, averaging 70% occupancy this year, according to French state rail firm SNCF, which operated the routes with Austria's OeBB and Germany's Deutsche Bahn. But it was an expensive endeavour: Unlike daytime trains, in which a seat can be resold to several passengers along a multi-stop route, a sleeper berth generates revenue from only one traveler per journey. Higher staffing requirements and locomotive changes at border crossings further raised expenses.
The end of the line for the service was the termination of an annual French subsidy of about €10 million. The service is "not economically viable without state subsidies," SNCF said in a statement. "Operating night trains is indeed a huge economic challenge," it said. OeBB said in a statement that its French partner SNCF had been informed by the French Transport Ministry that "government service orders for the operation of (both) night trains... will be discontinued in 2026."
Passenger advocacy group Yes to the Night Train said the French government ended subsidies because operators failed to fulfill a pledge to run the trains daily, offering service only three times a week instead. The French Transport Ministry declined to comment. SNCF said daily operations had become impossible given heavy construction work on French and German rail networks.
French President Emmanuel Macron promised in 2022 to restore around 10 night-train routes by 2030, after most had been scrapped in the 2010s. France now operates eight domestic overnight lines from Paris, including to Nice, Toulouse and Tarbes, but SNCF said they rely on state subsidies.
The Paris-Berlin service was already suspended for more than two months in summer 2024, just months after its launch, due to track repairs. Passengers traveling to Berlin will still have the option of an eight-hour high-speed train inaugurated late last year.
OeBB said it would continue to invest in existing overnight routes and maintain its Vienna-Brussels service with added comfort and capacity. It runs night train services to Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland among others, according to its website.