[Wildgoose]

I remember that the UK was forced to privatise Rail in the way that it did because of EU competition rules. I was commuting by Rail at the time and the manner in which it was privatised was considered to be barmy by both myself and fellow passengers.

[owisd]

This is just another “bendy bananas”-tier myth. The UK was never forced to privatise because of EU competition rules, see, for example, France, an EU member state that retained publicly owned railways during the same period.

There are EU competition rules that require separating operations from infrastructure, but it is and always has been fine to do this as separate divisions under the same publicly owned umbrella.

[martinald]

Not true. The EU is taking Netherlands to court for not allowing private companies (not state owned) to bid on the main passenger routes: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...

De facto it is required, and you see that in Germany - many routes are not operated by DB anymore.