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By Benjamin Wehrmann, Clean Energy Wire
Germany’s largest opposition group in parliament, the conservative CDU/CSU alliance, has supported the continuation of the country’s national flat-rate ticket for using local public transport nationwide. The offer should continue next year, but passengers are likely to be hit with a price rise.
The parliamentary group of the Christian Democrat Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), said it would back funding the scheme, which was introduced by the outgoing government of chancellor Olaf Scholz, throughout 2025. The announcement came after the CSU had initially put the Germany ticket’s future in doubt.
CDU head Friedrich Merz, who could become chancellor after the snap elections on 23 February, had said his conservative alliance would only support selected policy proposals left over by Scholz’s failed coalition of the Social Democrats (SPD), the Green Party and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP).
Following the coalition’s collapse, Germany’s states had warned that the flat-rate ticket’s funding for next year was uncertain, claiming that the entire scheme could be terminated due to funding disputes between the states and the federal government. CSU parliamentary group leader Ulrich Lange said that the conservatives would approve states using leftover funds from 2023 to finance the ticket, public broadcaster ARD reported. “They should keep and use them. This means the Germany ticket is secured for 2025,” Lange said.
However, the decision would only be formally adopted after Scholz’s vote of confidence in parliament, scheduled for 16 December, he added. SPD transport policy speaker Isabel Cademartori said her party was glad that the CDU/CSU had consented to continuing the ticket scheme “and did not turn it into a political bargaining chip”.
The ticket currently costs 49 euros per month and allows people to use all local public transport. Passengers are able to travel across the entire country by connecting different regional services. The price will likely rise to 58 euros per month in 2025, which will require co-funding of about 1.5 billion euros per year both from the federal government and states, ARD reported. About 13 million people are using the Germany ticket, the government said.
See also: Portugal becomes the latest EU state to announce a flat-rate monthly rail pass
- This article was first published by Clean Energy Wire here. It was republished under a “Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0)” .
