Thalys (French: ) is a French-Belgian high-speed train operator originally built around the LGV Nord high-speed line between Paris and Brussels. This track is shared with Eurostar trains that go from Paris, Brussels or Amsterdam to London via Lille and the Channel Tunnel and with French domestic TGV trains. Thalys also serves Amsterdam (via the HSL-Zuid) and German cities in the Rhein-Ruhr, including Aachen, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Essen and Dortmund. Thalys was created out of a political ambition formalised in October 1987 to establish a network of international high-speed railway services between the cities of Paris, Brussels, Cologne, and Amsterdam. The Thalys name was created in January 1995. The company procured a fleet of Alstom-built TGV trains to operate its services as they were viewed as the only existing rolling stock suitable to the task. On 4 June 1996, the first Thalys-branded train departed Paris, early services were more reliant on slower conventional lines as many of the new high speed lines were still under construction. Service speeds would improve with the opening of Belgium's HSL 1 line in December 1997 and the Dutch HSL-Zuid in December 2009, alongside other infrastructure works. Thalys' busiest route is the Paris - Belgium corridor; various airlines, such as Air France and KLM, have opted to discontinue directly competing flights with Thalys' high speed services. The service was historically managed by Thalys International, which was 70% owned by SNCF (the national railway company of France) and 30% owned by the National Railway Company of Belgium (NMBS/SNCB) and operated by THI Factory which is 60% owned by SNCF and 40% owned by NMBS/SNCB. Between 2007 and 2013, the German national railway company had also held a 10% stake in the company. On 30 March 2015, Thalys was restructured as a conventional train operating company, becoming less reliant on SNCF and SNCB. During September 2019, a plan to merge Thalys and the cross-Channel high speed train operator Eurostar was announced; approval of the merger was issued by the European Commission on 28 March 2022. In February 2022, Thalys International was integrated into THI Factory, which in turn was acquired by the holding company Eurostar Group during the following month. History Background and establishment Prior to the creation of Thalys, an express rail service had long been operated between the capital cities of Paris and Brussels, the earliest being run in 1924 in the form of the