New EU Rules on Compensation for Rail Delays

[LNW-GW Joint]

Not sure if this has been posted before, but there are new rules in the EU for compensation after disruption to rail journeys.
The aim is to bring it closer to the compensation rules for air travel delays (the EC 261/2004 regulations, which still apply to UK-EU travel).
It looks as though there are more exclusions for events outside the operator's control (weather, terrorism, pandemics etc), but there are stronger rights in some areas, including connections.
The basic rules seem unchanged, ie 25/50% refund for delayed journeys of 1/2 hours respectively.

MSN

But new rules mean companies won’t have to pay compensation in the event of a “force majeure” or extraordinary circumstances. This means events outside the rail operators' reasonable control such as storms, flooding, terrorist attacks or pandemics.
The new rules only apply if the company can’t prevent or avoid delays or cancellations caused by these events. Strikes don’t count as extraordinary circumstances and rail operators will still have to fulfil other obligations like reimbursing ticket costs or rerouting passengers.

The European Commission says the move is intended to “establish a level playing field with other transport modes”. It says in the future a new EU-wide standardised compensation and reimbursement form will be developed.
Despite changes to compensation, the new rules introduced on Wednesday do include some extra protections for passengers.

If travel is disrupted and they aren’t offered a solution to continue the journey within 100 minutes, they have a new right to “self-rerouting”. This means passengers will be able to organise their own travel by rail or bus and be reimbursed by the rail company for the “necessary, appropriate and reasonable” cost of the new ticket.
New rules also include regulations on “through tickets” - when connecting train tickets are sold together. Passengers have more rights if they miss a connection, including ticket reimbursement or compensation, accommodation when a journey cannot continue on the same day, and refreshments.

 

[dutchflyer]

A fairly big/major change, and likely not at al to the liking of the railways, is that after a certain time when railway has not done anything to help out, the passenger him/herself can arrange f.e. taxi/transport or even hotel (not superdeluxe 6*) if it is too late to continue and then expect/struggle/hope to get that money back from railway in default. Or that was how it was presented in dutch forums. Certainly rianvdborgt, the expert in these matters from Belgium, will know more.
With railways-IMHO even more as with airlines-there is most often a cliff between theory and practice.
That dirt cheap DE-Ticket, the 49€ monthly over there (yes I have one since this month) is now exempted from this all due to some obscure rule that ´supercheap´tickets can be exempted.
To my surprise on a heavy delay (causing me to change plans thoroughly) by SJ in SE=Sweden I even got a SMS stating I could get a free cf+snack at the railway kiosk by showing the attached code. Just that I only noted that much later. Most likely thus an automatic thing. Still have to try to get the money paid for this REServation back-took me quite some time untill dr.google helped out, to find how SJ does that with foreigners without that allmighty SE-personal nr.