Paris (AFP)
SNCF wants to begin the merger of its subsidiaries Eurostar and Thalys, which provide high-speed links to London and Benelux to create a more efficient European company, announced Friday his boss Guillaume Pepy.
"Combining the two networks" has three advantages, he told reporters: "make a piece of Europe high speed", simplify the lives of travelers and increase attendance.
"It is thought that there is a potential of about 30 million" travelers on both networks, against 18.5 million in 2018, noted the leader.
"Our goal (...) is to create a European company that will facilitate the transport from city to city between countries and will compete with the air and the car," noted Rachel Picard, the Director General from SNCF Voyages.
The merger project, called "Greenspeed", will have to be presented to staff and approved by the boards of directors of both entities and by their shareholders, said Mr. Pepy.
The merger, if it is done, should take "between eighteen months and two years," according to him. And neither the headquarters of the future entity - Eurostar is currently based in London and Thalys in Brussels - nor the brand that would be chosen in the end, have not been decided, he said, occasionally a presentation Thursday to the press of some elements of the "financial model" of the SNCF by 2026.
The Eurostar company is 55% owned by SNCF, 30% by the Caisse de depot et placement du Québec, 10% by the British Hermes Infrastructure fund and 5% by the Belgian SNCB. Providing high-speed connections - through the Channel Tunnel - between London and Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam, it transported 11 million passengers in 2018, for a turnover of 1.15 billion euros.
Thalys, a 60% subsidiary of SNCF and 40% of SNCB, transported 7.5 million people between France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands last year, and realized a turnover of business of 527 million euros.
"The idea is to develop and extend" this dual network, and the SNCF "obviously wants to keep control" of all, said Guillaume Pepy.
© 2019 AFP