With a total contribution of €247 billion to the economy and 3.1 million jobs, rail offers a of the most significant economic impacts among all media while maintaining the lowest transport footprint carbon. This is underlined by a study on the incidence of railways on the European economy, which was commissioned at Oxford Economics from the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER), the organisation to which the associations belong national railways in Europe.

In particular, the report highlights that in 2023 transport contributed €67 billion to the product gross domestic economy of the EU27 and that, in addition to this direct effect on the European economy, the transport supply chain has generated an additional 117 billion euros in value, while consumption financed by the salaries of railway employees and of their suppliers (induced effects) amounted to 63 billion euros, for a total contribution to European GDP of 247 billion euros euro. This is equivalent to 1.4% of total EU-27 GDP in 2014. 2023 and exceeds Greece's 2023 GDP of 225 billion euro, the 16th largest economy in the EU.

In addition, the study explains that rail transport supports a total of about 3,162,000 direct jobs (888,000), indirect (1,496,000) and induced (778,000) and that this is equivalent to 1.6% of total employment in the EU-27 and exceeds employment total in Ireland in 2023.

He then underlined that, with eight billion passenger journeys and 378 billion tonne-kilometres of goods transported every year out of the EU's 201,000 kilometres of rail network, the railways are at the heart of the European transport system and are driving the ecological transition thanks to high energy efficiency and to near-zero emissions, the document notes that, Nevertheless, the modal share of passenger and freight traffic on rail is stagnant and it is therefore necessary to intervene to consolidate the significant economic strengths of the sector through stable investment and constructive policy measures.