In a press release on Wednesday 8 February, the Austrian Transport Minister, Jörg Leichtfried, provided a heated response to the European Commission proposal to revise the project downwards on InterRail tickets for young Europeans that have just celebrated their 18th birthday.
The project to provide a one-month InterRail ticket to young Europeans aged 18 was proposed by the president of the EPP political group, Manfred Weber (Germany), following a state of the European Union speech from the President of the European Commission. The objective was to regenerate the European project, particularly among young people (see EUROPE 11685).
At the end of 2016, the European Commission said that this kind of project would cost between €2-3 billion a year for a €400 ticket (see EUROPE 11639), which our source informed us would be the “catalogue price”. The Commission thinks that this is much too high and pointed out that no increase in the Community budget is planned to underpin such a project.
The Commission would prefer to put in place a pilot project for 2017 that would target certain pupils from schools participating in the e-twinning exchange programme. According to our information, this is a European exchange and cooperation platform between different schools (see EUROPE 11674) with a budget of €2.5 million and would involve around 5,000 people. We have also been informed that the Commission project seeks to distance itself from any InterRail concept and shift towards an approach based on mobility and the promotion of sustainability and environmental criteria.
This approach is not appreciated by all stakeholders. The Austrian Transport Minister exclaimed that he hoped that “The proposal strung together is a joke”. Mr Leichtfried explained that the initial goal was to enable all young Europeans to travel and get to know other countries and people and therefore help them to deconstruct prejudice. He also said that the initial objective was to consolidate the European project. He believes that the European Commission should therefore revise its draft and ambitions upwards. According to a press release from the Minister, the Commission should attempt to reach all young people and not just those participating in an Erasmus programme.
Mr Weber, the driving force behind the project, speaking on Twitter, preferred to calm things down by providing assurances that the project “is going forward step-by-step”. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)