Dear European leaders: here's a little idea for your competitiveness agenda

This idea would:

• Allow Europeans to travel internationally, while emitting as little CO2 as possible
• Create jobs in European manufacturing industries, some even in the most deprived corners of the EU
• Boost the construction industry that would get contracts to build new lines
• Benefit both state owned and privately owned enterprises, and big cities and rural areas alike

The issue is even mentioned in the Enrico Letta report - page 83 of the PDF. It's also mentioned in Ursula von der Leyen's political guidelines for the European Commission.

What is the idea?

Fixing railway ticketing in the EU.

Planning and booking rail tickets cross border is hard at the moment, and if you do even manage you can be left stranded and out of pocket.

But make it easier for people to book tickets on cross-border trains, and they will do it more. Meaning they will also take the more polluting alternatives - planes and cars - less.

If you are interested in how to do it, I have just the guide.

Anyway more tickets sold is going to mean that rail companies are going to have to step up and offer more services. The additional income will mean they buy more trains, the vast majority of which will be built in plants in EU countries, and some of those factories are in rather deprived regions as well. Unlike in the automotive sector, there is not yet a serious threat from China.

More passengers and a better balance sheet for the railway industry, and bottlenecks on the European railway network, are going to be a benefit to the construction industry that is going to build the new lines. We even know what to build and where - completion of the TEN-T corridors would be the perfect place to start.

And as European railways are partially liberalised - both in terms of operations and ticket sales - both state companies like Deutsche Bahn and Trenitalia, and private companies like Flixtrain and Trainline - would stand to benefit.

So what's the problem?

As Enrico Letta correctly outlines, and Mario Monti emphasises in the FT this week, some national defensive thinking has to be overcome. National champions clinging on to shrinking national monopolies is no way to make this sector thrive, and so there's going to have to be some pain in the headquarters of some railway companies before we see the gain here.

But the need is obvious.

Is there the will to do it?