France is set to launch a young person’s unlimited national rail pass for only €49 a month.
Paris excluded
Outside the capital, the pass will be usable on all TER and Intercity train journeys and can be purchased by anyone aged 27 years or younger. It cannot however be used for travel on high-speed trains, nor within the densely populated Ile de France region – which means Paris too is excluded. Over a million passengers use the TER network each day and up to 700,000 young people are anticipated to take advantage of the discount.
Regions of France trumpeted the country’s acceleration towards the plan in a statement last week. “In six months, the initial announcement of a French-style Deutschlandticket has now been translated into a €49 subscription for two months, on a network outside the Ile-de-France region, and only for young people,” the body said.
French-style Deutschland Ticket
Slated to be available for purchase from June this year, the introduction of the discount pass follows previous similar (albeit cheaper) schemes in 2020 and 2021, which were priced at €29 a month.
Last year, French officials praised an analogous German scheme, the so-called “Deutschland Ticket”. That promotion is, however, available for all with no age limit and allows travel on all means of local shared transport. President Macron went as far as promising a similar discount in France in an interview last September with a youtuber called Hugo – a promise he made lighthearted reference to when announcing the offer on Twitter.
“In front of Hugo, I said ‘banco’”, the President wrote on X, presumably highlighting the fact that the government will be funding the concession to the tune of approximately €15 million, or up to 80% of its cost. The rest of the money will have to be found by French regions.
Not everyone is satisfied
Some of those regions however, and other critics of the measure, say the decision to exclude the Parisian region and to place an age threshold on the promotion is “disappointing” and lacks ambition.
Hervé Morin, president of the Normandy region, complained that pass does not respect the core French value of equality: “If there must be a rail pass, it must be national and apply to the entire French network and must not exclude the Ile-de-France network through which most young people inexorably pass when going to another region by train.”
Meanwhile the Hauts-de-France region pointed out that its young people would have to buy extra tickets in order to avoid the exclusion of Ile-de-France. “Young people in the Haut-de-France region will have to buy an additional ticket worth up to €16 in the Ile-de-France region, in addition to the Rail Pass, in order to be able to transfer to other regions,” representatives of the region said.
