Trains: delays and cancellations

What you may be owed

Refund or re-routing

You pick one: a refund of the ticket within 30 days, with a return to your starting point if the trip no longer makes sense; or continuing to your destination as soon as possible or on a date that suits you, at no extra cost, even in a higher class or by another means of transport.

If they don’t tell you how to continue

If no alternative has been offered within 100 minutes of the scheduled departure, you can book another train, coach or bus yourself, and the company has to pay back what was necessary, appropriate and reasonable. Keep the receipts.

Assistance while you wait

With a delay of 60 minutes or more, or a cancellation, free of charge: meals and refreshments in line with the wait and, if you have to stay overnight, a hotel and transport to it. If the cause is extraordinary, the hotel may be limited to three nights.

Compensation

If you carry on and arrive late: 25% of the ticket price for a delay of 60 to 119 minutes, and 50% for 120 minutes or more. It’s worked out on what you paid for that journey, paid within a month of asking and, if you ask for it, in money. The company may not pay amounts under €4 per ticket.

When there’s no compensation

If you were told about the delay before buying the ticket, if you took the refund, or if the company proves an extraordinary cause outside the railway —extreme weather, major natural disasters, major public health crises— or caused by third parties it couldn’t prevent —people on the track, cable theft, police action. It still owes you the assistance and the refund or re-routing. Strikes by the rail company’s own staff don’t let it off paying.

Does it apply to you?

• To domestic and international trains across the EU.
• Each country can leave out some trains —urban, suburban, regional, domestic long-distance, historic or tourist— and international ones that run mostly outside the EU. Trains from one EU country to another can’t be left out. Ask before you book.

How to claim, step by step

1. Ask the rail company for the refund or the compensation: on its website or with the EU common form, which works with any rail company in the EU (it’s optional). Keep your ticket and ask for proof of the delay.
2. If you have a complaint, send it to the company within three months of the incident. It has to reply within a month, or within three if it justifies it.
3. If it rejects it, or doesn’t reply within three months, complain to the national body of the country that licensed the company (within three months of the rejection, if there was one). The European Commission publishes the list for every country; for companies licensed in Spain, it’s the Ministry of Transport. It acknowledges receipt within two weeks and decides within three months (six if the case is complex).
4. You can also use alternative dispute resolution (if you live in the EU), the European Consumer Centre or the courts, including the European small claims procedure.