Lindner says €9 one-year note would cost Germany €14 billion

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German Finance Minister Christian Lindner said he opposed extending the popular €9 ticket for local transport because it would cost 14 billion euros ($14.1 billion) which could be better deployed elsewhere.

« 9 euros a month is not free – it means someone else pays, » Lindner told an audience of German citizens at the government’s open day in Berlin on Saturday. « The money that is then not available for education, for example. »

The minister, who belongs to the business-friendly FDP party, has repeatedly rejected the extension of the government’s three-month experiment with ultra-cheap public transport, launched this summer to help tackle a cost crisis life and reduce car use as energy prices. ascend. Discounted tickets will sell out at the end of August.

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The measure helped to moderate inflation. Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel said the end of the ticket and a discount on gasoline should boost price growth by around one percentage point in the fall. Inflation could even reach 10%, the first time it has hit double digits in more than 70 years, Nagel told the Rheinische Post in an interview.

A Kantar poll published last month showed that the 9 euro note has the support of the majority of the population.

Still, Lindner said the goal of the measure had not been fully achieved because a survey showed people had not fully switched from cars to public transport. Instead, most used the benefit for leisure travel.