Alemanha, Deutsche Welle, Alemão

Germany’s new transport minister, Steffen Bilger of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), said on Sunday that he planned to step up pressure on notoriously delayed railway operator Deutsche Bahn.

He told the mass-market Bild newspaper that bonus payments for Bahn managers would be impacted if government-set punctuality targets are not met.

“There will be a concrete impact on the bonus payments of rail managers if the targets set by the federal government are not met,” Bilger said. “I think rail customers and taxpayers have a right to have success genuinely measured.”

Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government is preparing a new financing agreement for the state-owned company that is to tie funding to specific targets.

Bilger took his ministerial post after Merz reshuffled his Cabinet last month, a move sparked by the resignation of senior conservative lawmaker Jens Spahn over a surrogacy scandal.

Deutsche Bahn is mired in a major structural crisis around delays and cancellations. In 2025, only 60% arrived on time or experienced delays of under six minutes, not including trains that were canceled or ended their journeys prematurely.

The center-left Social Democrats (SPD), who are junior coalition partners in Merz’s government, expressed support for the planned measure.

“I expressly welcome the fact that Transport Minister Bilger wants to link the bonus payments of rail managers to punctuality,” the SPD’s Isabel Cademartori told the Tagesspiegel newspaper.

“People expect the railway to become more reliable,” she said. “As politicians, we are providing record investments in infrastructure and expect this to be reflected in punctuality.”