The Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport is planning to finally abandon the era of “patches” on the railway and introduce long-term maintenance contracts Service Level Agreement (SLA) for entire sections of line, as announced yesterday by Deputy Minister Konstantinos Kyranakis.

2026, he said, will be the last year in which there will be piecemeal contracts for individual sections of the railway as the state will now talk to one contractor for infrastructure, safety systems, electrification and maintenance on each major axis.

The Athens-Thessaloniki line will be delivered in 2026

Speaking from the podium of the TMEDE conference, Kyranakis said that in the summer of 2026, without any further delay, the Athens-Thessaloniki railway line will be ready, fully equipped with 100% signalling, telecommand, and ETCS. Already, all trains that will run on the line have functional ETCS, while motorists are being trained for the first time in Greece in a simulator and not exclusively in the field.

At the same time, the deputy minister referred yesterday to the agreement with the Italian-owned Hellenic Train, which has committed to invest 300 million euros and supply 23 new trains by 2027. “If Greece does not have the new trains by then, the state will for the first time have the right to terminate the contract before 2035,” he stressed, describing this clause as a powerful bargaining chip, regardless of who is in government.