Press release: Military Mobility: a natural task for Combined Transport 03/09/25

Brussels, 3 September 2025 — Reflecting on the joint meeting of the European Parliament’s Transport (TRAN) and Security and Defence (SEDE) Committees, which took place on 1 September, and as an input to the European Parliament’s Report, as well as the upcoming Military Mobility Package of the European Commission, UIRR published a position paper to highlight the perspectives of Combined Transport on Military Mobility.

The main points of the position paper are:

§ Europe’s existing Combined Transport network, which connects 1000 terminals with 500 daily train departures, is well suited to meeting the transport needs of the defence sector to carry raw materials, intermediate products or finished items.

§ Intermodal terminals are secure locations capable of guaranteeing the safety of dangerous goods.

§ An extensive wagon fleet consisting of intermodal flat wagons and various types of pocket wagons optimised for the carriage of rubber-wheeled vehicles offers the opportunity of carrying a wide range of tracked and rubber-wheeled military equipment.

§ Besides offering the European Combined Transport network, European Combined Transport operators are capable of organising ad hoc military transport trains on cross-border relations on short notice.

Europe’s intermodal actors are ready to effectively support military mobility.

The capabilities of Combined Transport should be further enhanced by

1. amending the implementing regulation on dual-use infrastructure to include transhipment equipment on terminals,

2. treating the upgrades of terminals under the TEN-T Regulation with priority, and

3. recognising Combined Transport operators as ‘critical entities’ under the Resilience Directive.

In this way, the intermodal mode of door-to-door freight transport is reinforced as the competitive and efficient backbone of the European transport system by providing the most appropriate transport solutions.

“Combined Transport as the backbone of the European transport system offers the most effective means of facilitating military transports of heavy cargo by rail freight to spare the road infrastructure from wear and tear, while performing a safe, secure and reliable logistics service.” – highlighted UIRR Director General, Ralf-Charley Schultze.

Who is UIRR?

Founded in 1970, the International Union for Road-Rail Combined Transport (UIRR) represents the interests of European Road-Rail Combined Transport Operators and Transhipment Terminal Managers.

Road-Rail Combined Transport (CT) is a system of freight forwarding which is based on efficiently and economically inserting electric rail into long-distance (road) transport-chains through the use of intermodal loading units (ILU).