Brussels plans to get (a few) youth on planes, trains and buses

Those behind the proposal say the trial planned isn’t ambitious enough.

Reality is crashing in on plans to boost the EU’s popularity and fight populism with gifts of free InterRail tickets for young Europeans to roam the continent.

MEPs wanted the Commission to set up a system for issuing InterRail tickets to all EU citizens on their 18th birthday — a scheme that would have cost between €1.2 billion and €1.6 billion a year, according to Commission estimates.

The execution of their proposal is a lot less grandiose. Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc’s “Move2Learn, Learn2Move” pilot project announced Monday is a one-off — funded with €2.5 million to get a few thousand students moving out from selected schools.

Between €350 and €530 per student will be made available under the plan. Brussels Airlines, Deutsche Bahn, Iberia Express, Luxair, Olibus, SNCF, Trenitalia, Westbahn and InterRail are among the operators signed up to help out with the trial phase.

The Commission is setting two conditions before it hands over the cash to eligible students. First, travelers need to use a climate-focused points system that ranks each method of transport by emissions per passenger kilometer. That ranks rail as the cleanest, followed by buses and ferries. The points needed for a plane ride are some 20 times the value of a train journey.

Second, applicants have to spend at least three days at their destination for every day spent getting there.

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“Transport is not about tracks, ships or motorways; it is about people,” Bulc said. “We want to give young Europeans the chance to discover Europe. We also want to encourage them to travel in an environmentally friendly way, which is why CO2 emissions will be taken into account.”

The limited program is very far from the hopes of idea’s original backers.

“I regret that the plan that is now on the table represents a missed opportunity,” said European People’s Party leader Manfred Weber, who has spoken nostalgically of his own youth riding Europe’s rails. “The costs for such a proposal are much lower than the numbers announced, and Europe needs inspiring projects aimed at making Europeans discover each other and the beauty of their continent.”

Weber will push to have more generous funding for the project added to the EU’s 2018 budget. German Green MEP Michael Cramer agreed that the Commission’s high cost estimates for the full program are “exaggerated in order to make the project fail.”

He’s also unhappy that Bulc’s project isn’t wedded to the romance of the rails, an idea denounced as unfair by bus and air companies.

“By traveling through Europe on trains, you make it environmentally friendly, get in contact with other people, different cultures and everything that makes up the EU,” Cramer said. “Other modes of transport are not an alternative for such a project.”

The deadline for applications is June 30, with the first travelers set to hit the road in August. All the cash will need to be used up by December 2018 — by which point MEPs will have to figure out what to do next.

“I am sure some details of the project will change after the pilot phase, but I believe we managed to create a long-term and sustainable program,” said István Ujhelyi, a Hungarian MEP for the Socialists and Democrats and an early backer of the scheme. “Although bitter critics will claim this is nothing more than a free joyride, the project points far beyond that by opening up new horizons for an entire generation.”