Renfe has completed the registration of its Lyon (France) branch in the neighbouring country’s trade register, thus obtaining permission from the French authorities to start trading on the French market imminently, the railway company said.
The new Renfe branch is located near Lyon’s Part Dieu station. The procedure is a “decisive step” towards the company’s long-term establishment on the French market and a “key stage” in its internationalisation strategy, according to Spanish publication elperiodico.com.
Renfe said that, in practice, this advance completes the administrative procedures necessary for its full operation in France. It describes this market as a “priority” in the company’s internationalisation strategy, where the most urgent stage will be the commissioning of the new AVE trains that will link Barcelona-Girona-Figueres Vilafant to Lyon and Madrid-Zaragoza-Camp de Tarragona-Barcelona-Girona-Figueres Vilafant to Marseille.
The routes will have numerous stops in France, such as Narbonne, Montpellier, Nimes, Avignon and Aix-en-Provence. The company will announce in the coming days the opening of sales for this service. Renfe says the next steps will be “to extend AVE trains on the corridors with the highest density and economic interest for the company and to position it as a reference operator for the French public”.
Issues with the French market
Renfe has always blamed the French authorities and SNCF for the difficulties encountered in offering cross-border services with France. In 2019, SNCF and Renfe stopped operating the route between Barcelona and Toulouse, a route not served by high-speed trains. And already in February 2022 it was announced that they would drop the alliance to operate lines in France from Madrid to Marseille and Barcelona to Lyon, in addition to Barcelona-Paris.
In 2022, Renfe said that the break-up had been unilaterally made by SNCF, after the worst of the pandemic had passed and when the French company’s “low cost” trains were already operating in Spain under the Ouigo brand on the Madrid-Barcelona and Madrid-Valencia routes.
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