The European Commission adopted a new regulation to facilitate pan European rail journey planning and ticketing, by forcing a standardisation of rail passenger data on fares and timetables. This means that key reservation and ticketing information will be inter-operable and exchanged between rail companies throughout the EU as well as ticket vendors.

The Commission will in 2012 bring forward a complementary legal measure requiring rail operators to bring their IT systems and practices into line, so that the standardised data can in practice be transferred between operators. These measures allow a new generation of European rail journey planners and ticketing systems to start to emerge on market.

The Commission is in the process of assessing the need for further measures to remove barriers that are holding back the development of cross border rail, and in multi modal travel planning and ticketing. The Commission has also recently launched a public consultation "Towards a European Multi-Modal Journey Planner" which will also feed into this process.

The Regulation also legally requires operators to make data related to timetabling available in the public domain, as well as to make fare information available to agreed partners.The new EU technical regulation adopted - Telematics Applications for Passenger Services – will force the standardisation of data relating to timetables and fares.

Railways have widely differing booking systems, based on data which is processed in different ways and is largely not interchangeable, because they have evolved with a national focus. The result, for passengers, is very limited possibilities to book rail tickets cross border, with the exception of a small number of major international direct cross border rail routes. With regard to the EU internal market, this is an unlike situation.