The first clouds over the future of the new Turin-Lyon railway emerged at the end of August 2026, when the Conseil d’orientation des infrastructures (Infrastructure Advisory Council), the French Government’s advisory body on transport infrastructure, spoke of “strong uncertainty over the date on which the new high-capacity cross-border route will enter service”. According to the Conseil, the forecast for completion of the works, previously set for the end of 2033, should be revised to 2035.
This assessment was based on alleged delays accumulated in the excavation of one of the sections in French territory, specifically at the Saint-Martin-de-la-Porte construction site. Telt, the Italian-French binational promoter overseeing the construction and future management of the cross-border railway, issued a firm response. General manager Maurizio Bufalini and Paolo Foietta, president of the Commissione intergovernativa (Intergovernmental Commission), denied that there were delays, describing the situation as a normal development in the various stages of tunnel construction, with time allowances already prudently factored into the schedule. Telt would therefore maintain its 2033 completion date.
But after this exchange, when any further controversy appeared to have subsided, a new issue has emerged, this time concerning the Chiomonte construction site, which is responsible for excavating the Italian section of the new Mont Cenis base tunnel. The news has attracted little attention because the source raising fresh questions is not a public announcement but a bureaucratic factsheet produced by Cinea, the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency, which did not, however, go unnoticed by the technical commission of the Unione montana Valle Susa (Susa Valley Mountain Union). In the document, last updated in September 2026, the previously envisaged deadline of 30 June 2026 has been pushed back by one year, to 30 June 2027.
To understand what these deadlines mean, it is worth looking back at the background. The latest €700 million in EU funding obtained by Telt under the Connecting Europe Facility Transport programme was awarded on the basis that eligible works could be reported from 1 January 2024 and completed by 30 June 2026. These activities also included the start of excavation of the base tunnel on the Italian side, but the 30 June 2026 deadline has now passed without excavation work beginning. Cinea has therefore had to revise the timetable, postponing the deadline by one year. The extension was not decided unilaterally by the agency itself, but was most likely made following a request from Telt or the Italian authorities, which would therefore have been aware from the outset of the accumulated delays. Moreover, the latest Cipess resolution of 29 April 2026, which approved the new spending ceiling of €14.7 billion, specifies that the cross-border section of the new Turin-Lyon railway is expected to open for commercial operations by 31 December 2033. But in light of the continuing timetable slippages, that date may now also come back into question.
Piermario Curti Sacchi
