On 1 July 2019, the Commission launched a new online booking tool called NEO. The goal is to help staff in booking their missions. In practice, NEO is the furthest thing from offering sustainable travel.
First things first. In theory, you see options of logging in and choosing between air and rail transport. In practice, the search function finds a considerable number of train stations, available for selection. However, for many, if not most of these train stations, NEO does not offer any rail connections whatsoever, which leaves us wondering why this is the case.
Now, one should think that this user guide would be of use. The search hangs in vain, should you ever venture to In fact, the only reliable information source on these matters comes from an Excel sheet on Intracomm. The file lists the only train destinations that can actually be booked by the tool. However, this Excel based list is rather limited: only Belgium, the Netherlands, stations served by TGV and Eurostar trains plus a couple of places in Germany are included. Here are a couple of examples to highlight the tool’s inconsistencies and limitations:
- Although the two largest German cities of Berlin and Hamburg, as well as Leipzig are covered by the tool, they are missing from the Excel list.
- Luxembourg, the second largest Commission workplace, is also not listed in the Excel sheet but is present in NEO. Maybe the developers thought Luxembourg is only a Belgian province?
It all leads to the tool being useless for rail travel for most Commission sites outside of Belgium. In fact, the worst part is the tool’s positively misleading experience that is offered to its users: at first it gives you hope and then crushes it with an iron “rail” – pun intended…
In a time when online timetables are widely available, covering virtually every place in Europe you can reach by train, no matter if going from Syracuse, Sicily to Rovaniemi, North of Finland or from Tallinn to Lisbon. Open market booking tools such as trainline.com [1] cover much more than NEO. So even if not every train can be booked online (wouldn’t that be a good opportunity for the new Commission to take action and lead by example?), at least the timetables should be made available to show the available options.
Other features of NEO are, to say the least, not very user-friendly. For example, the tool does not recognize the native spelling of place names. It is English only, or whatever the developers thought should be the English spelling. For instance, if you look for Napoli in bella Italia, the system offers amongst other places Indianapolis – but surely not Naples. If you look for Wien, the Austrian capital, the tool offers Wiencourt L’Equipee (population 260) in northern France and nothing else.
Generation 2004 will inquire about this with DG HR and come back to you. Should you have any suggestions on lowering CO2 emission or on travel booking tools, please share them with us.