As the American war on Iran led Iran to close the Straits of Hormuz, taking 20% of global oil deliveries offline, the German government and the EU have both promised that they are going to implement short- and long-term measures to reduce oil consumption and the national security risks it involves. These include investment in electric vehicles and German and European infrastructure packages on public transportation to reduce the extent of driving. Sources close to Chancellor Friedrich Merz added that even if the war is resolved soon and oil deliveries resume, the long-term package will reduce Russia’s oil and gas export revenues and improve European security.

In Germany, deficit spending will be used; members of the SPD left assure the coalition that there will be a two-thirds majority for it as Die Linke is opposed to the Iran war and supportive of both the green transition and visible decoupling from the American-led world order, and the Greens have long been supportive of such investments. The package is said to total 100 billion € in capital construction for urban, regional, and intercity rail, and negotiations are ongoing over the split, with the coalition insisting that nearly all money be spent on U- and S-Bahn extensions including future park-and-rides with electric vehicle charging stations and on high-speed rail lines and negotiators for the Greens demanding more money for regional trains and trams. The Greens’ working group on transportation insists on prioritizing regional trains, since the point of the program is to provide alternatives to the car where the current quality is too low, rather than to make already strong intercity lines stronger.

At the EU level, a package will be used to construct high-speed rail on the core cross-border lines in Western and Central Europe; farther east, financing for member state-led projects will be made available with member states choosing their own priorities, which can even be about issues other than transportation. The highest-priority lines are said to be Utrecht-Rhine-Ruhr, a connection from the LGV Est to Saarbrücken and Frankfurt via Metz and to Karlsruhe and Stuttgart via Strasbourg, completion of high-speed rail across the gaps in Belgium, an acceleration of construction of the connecting high-speed lines on the German and Austrian side of the Brenner Base Tunnel, an acceleration of the remaining gap from Perpignan to the rest of the TGV network, a new line from Bordeaux and Dax to Irún and the Spanish network, and a connection from Berlin to Poznań and the under-construction Polish network toward Warsaw. The German government assures the EU Commission that its own package will include a Berlin-Dresden connection to link with the base tunnel to be built to Czechia, where the Czech network will connect from it to Prague and the rest of the country.

The total cost of all of these lines at the EU level is said to be 50 billion €, but the package is expected to be much larger to include electric vehicle infrastructure and grants to the cohesion countries. Hungary may be included with especial subsidies in the event Péter Magyar wins the election this month, in order to provide him with more economic legitimacy, in which case a program connecting Budapest with the major secondary cities of Hungary as well as Bratislava and Vienna will be announced, a total of 600 km of Hungarian construction at what is estimated to cost 20 billion €.