The European Commission has today adopted a new regulation to facilitate pan European rail journey planning and ticketing, by forcing a standardisation of rail passenger data on fares and timetables. This means that key reservation and ticketing information will be inter-operable and can be exchanged between rail companies throughout the EU as well as ticket vendors. The Commission will in 2012 bring forward a complementary legal measure requiring rail operators to bring their IT systems and practices into line, so that the standardised data can in practice be transferred between operators. These measures lay the technical foundations to allow a new generation of European rail journey planners and ticketing systems to start to emerge on market.