A government report launched in early 2025, with conclusions announced on May 18, 2026, examines delays observed on several recent contracts. The Dugué-Feugier-Ramette mission identifies a range of causes, including unrealistic schedules, technical complexity, homologation, project management and industry chain cohesion. International comparisons highlight different practices for handling specification changes. An action plan is being prepared for summer 2026.
The essentials
- Structural delays on several French rolling stock programs have an identified cause: the multiplication and instability of specifications between order and delivery.
- The Dugué-Feugier-Ramette report (May 2026) is a recent government mission that analyzes several programs and provides a diagnosis of delays.
- Some German and Swiss programs rely on centralized governance structures.
- These delays affect the railway capacity objectives needed to support modal shift.
- The French government is preparing an action plan for summer 2026; its effectiveness will depend on its ability to modify program governance processes.
The ordered train is no longer the delivered train
The difficulties involve industry, specification and order management. The main French manufacturer fulfills several railway contracts internationally. Delays stem from multiple causes: requirements definition, industrialization, suppliers, testing and homologation.
The mechanism is relatively simple. An organizing authority—a region, SNCF, the state—issues a call for bids with a specification document. Between contract signing and delivery, which spans several years for complex rolling stock, this specification document changes. The reasons vary: changes in elected officials, regulatory evolution, integration of new accessibility standards, platform gauge modification, addition of digital equipment. Modifications during the execution phase constitute a risk that can lead to engineering, testing and schedule impacts.
The Dugué-Feugier-Ramette report documents slippage across several programs, highlighting a recurring phenomenon. Delays and fragmented orders can reduce equipment availability and transport supply.
Germany and Switzerland do things differently
The report’s international comparisons deserve attention. Germany and Switzerland are not easy cases to hold up as universal models: their administrative structures, railway markets and industrial traditions differ significantly from France. But on one specific point, the lesson is reproducible.
Some German and Swiss programs concentrate program responsibility within a single authority. This authority is not an interministerial steering committee or a coordination structure between multiple ordering parties: it is an identifiable actor, with a clear mandate and the ability to say no to late modification requests. When a German region wants to add a feature during a program, it can do so, but only by accepting either an explicit additional cost or a documented delivery delay. The decision is firm, traceable and assumed.
In France, governance of these programs involves multiple actors whose roles and responsibilities are not always distinct. Modification requests can be introduced with uneven formalization of their schedule impacts. The result can be an accumulation of delays.
Switzerland offers a useful nuance. The Swiss railway network is renowned for its operational punctuality, but its rolling stock renewal programs have also experienced tensions. Some European countries apply more formal contractualization of modifications, including explicit amendments on prices and timelines. Informal modification, the “we’ll sort it out along the way” approach, does not fit standard practice.
France produces unstable specifications
Understanding the origin of this problem requires looking at the structure of French public rail procurement itself. The country has thirteen regions that finance regional equipment, a SNCF organized into several entities since the 2018 reform, railway safety authorities whose doctrine is evolving, and a European regulatory framework that has strengthened on accessibility and interoperability over the past decade.
This complexity is not inherently pathological. A decentralized country investing in its regional railway network must accommodate different local needs. Regional trains in Occitania do not face the same constraints as those in the Hauts-de-France. Customization is legitimate.
The problem arises when customization comes too late in the process. European accessibility standards evolved during several programs already underway, forcing costly adaptations. Regions changed political majorities between order and delivery, bringing new priorities. Infrastructure evolutions imposed costly adaptations to already-validated features.
There is also a less visible dimension: French public procurement values technical sophistication in specifications. A public buyer who specifies precisely and abundantly protects themselves legally. A thin specification document invites lawsuits. French public procurement favors detailed specifications, which can complicate technical adaptations.
The concrete cost of these delays
A rolling stock program that slips by two years represents more than administrative inconvenience. It has measurable operational consequences.
The first effect is saturation of the existing fleet. When new trains don’t arrive, older stock keeps running, with rising maintenance costs and declining reliability. SNCF Voyageurs has documented situations where equipment due for retirement had to stay in service for lack of replacement.
The second effect touches transport capacity. An undelivered train affects transport supply capacity and modal shift objectives. Modal transfer requires having the necessary equipment to absorb additional demand.
The third effect, less often cited, is financial for regions. A contract with delay penalties generates disputes, negotiations, sometimes partial order cancellations. Public money spent managing these disputes does not finance new trains.
These delays are part of a broader context of strain on French railway infrastructure, where delays in bringing new lines into service and deterioration of certain network sections compound their effects. The issue of public finances constrains investment capacity across the entire chain.
The low-carbon timetable under pressure
The dimension making this problem urgent goes beyond railway management. France has made commitments to decarbonize transport that require significant modal shift from road to rail by 2030 to 2035. Fewer cars, more trains: this is the central equation of any strategy to reduce emissions from the transport sector, which represents about 30% of French emissions.
This modal shift cannot be decreed. It requires sufficient railway capacity to accommodate rising demand. Yet this capacity depends directly on the renewal and development of the rolling stock fleet. The government is observing delays on several programs and their potential effects on capacity availability.
The optimistic scenario, which assumes governance reform of programs from 2026-2027 onward, would allow for partial catch-up. Programs whose specifications are stabilized now would deliver equipment between 2030 and 2033, with reduced but real delays against initial ambitions. Transport decarbonization would stretch out, without being compromised.
The status quo scenario is more concerning. If governance reform is delayed, if the summer 2026 action plan remains at the level of intentions without modifying actual procurement processes, delays risk accumulating on future programs. France risks having insufficient railway capacity at the moment when demand for low-carbon transport rises.
Both trajectories remain open and several levers exist, but the constraint is real. The European Court of Auditors flagged it in its 2026 transport audit by noting that several member states lag behind in deploying low-carbon railway equipment. France is not alone in this situation. Five-year political cycles align poorly with industrial programs requiring eight to ten years.
The trade-offs the action plan must address
The Dugué-Feugier-Ramette report leads to recommendations whose operational translation the government is preparing. Two structuring options emerge from the report’s logic, even if their final arbitration has not yet been publicly decided.
The plan provides for collective sector governance and work on clarifying roles in project management. The plan provides for a collective steering committee for monitoring, without explicitly giving it the power to say no or impose costing of requests. This is the approach German and Swiss comparisons suggest. It requires reform of governance between the state, SNCF and regions, which is no small political matter.
A second approach is to strengthen contractual mechanisms for stabilizing specifications during a program. Current contracts already provide for such mechanisms, but their application is flexible. Making them more binding would require a change in culture among public buyers and in contracts themselves.
These two options complement each other. A rigid contract without an authority to enforce it remains a dead letter, and an authority without solid contractual framework lacks legal footing. The action plan was signed on July 7, 2026 and relies on a collective approach without substituting for the proper responsibilities of the players involved.
Reform of program governance could have significant effects on the French railway network’s capacity to support energy transition. Rolling stock delays can slow railway development, but the official diagnosis attributes them to a set of organizational, industrial, contractual and regulatory causes.
Sources
- French Government Rolling Stock Study (Dugué, Feugier, Ramette), Rail Market, May 2026
- European Court of Auditors, Transport Audit 2026 (ECA Transport Audit 2026), no link: report published by the EU Court of Auditors, available on eca.europa.eu
- SNCF Réseau, rolling stock delivery data 2020-2026, no link: internal data published in SNCF Réseau annual reports
