Did you know that Europe's rail sector employs around 900 000 people, and that many more depend on it indirectly? Over the past 25 years, the EU has supported rail as a greener mode of transport, and helped to improve rail workers' skills, social conditions and safety. To this end, the EU adopted a number of specific laws and established the EU Agency for Railways.

If you are a train driver, you can benefit from greater opportunities to work abroad and improved safety, thanks to EU-wide certification procedures, introduced in 2007 and improved in 2014 to ensure uniform application across all EU countries. Language requirements for train drivers were harmonised in 2019.

As a rail worker, you benefit from EU rules specifying the minimum health and safety requirements for the organisation of your working time. If you work in urban transport, which is regulated at the national or regional level, you generally benefit from conditions exceeding these minimum requirements. If you work on cross‑border rail services, you also benefit from other specific European rules on certain aspects of your working conditions. For instance, you are entitled to a daily rest period of 12 consecutive hours and to breaks of between 30 and 45 minutes; these rules also limit daily driving time to nine hours on a day shift and eight hours on a night shift.

To support rail sector research and innovation, the EU set up Europe's Rail (formerly Shift2Rail), a partnership exploring technological and operational solutions for traffic management, vehicles, infrastructure, services and sustainable employment.