€25,000 offer to youths to quit driving is now open

Applications for young drivers to give up their licence for €25,000 opened on Tuesday morning, with Transport Malta running the scheme on a first-come, first-served basis.

Young people aged up to 30 are eligible. Applicants will surrender their driving licence for five years, in exchange for a €5,000 grant every year for those five years.

Details on the Transport Malta website note that the scheme has a total budget of €5 million. 

A Transport Malta spokesperson later clarified that €5 million will be allocated to the scheme each year, for a total budget of €25 million across the five-year period. 

That means funding for up to 1,000 applicants has been made available.   

To qualify, applicants must have lived in Malta for at least seven years and have had a Category B driving licence for at least 12 months.

Applicants must have licences issued by an EU country. 

Applicants are not eligible for the grant if they are: 

• Entitled to a chauffeur, including political office holders and their spouses/partners;
• Public Officials, including diplomats working in foreign missions such as embassies or representations, and their spouses/partners;
• Individuals whose job requires them to have a valid driving licence.

Those accepted applicants will receive their first €5,000 instalment when they hand in their driving licence, following grant approval. Grant payments will then be scheduled on the following anniversaries of the first instalment. 

That means, if you receive your first €5,000 on February 3, 2026, you will receive the second instalment on February 3, 2027.

During the five-year period, successful applicants are not allowed to drive a vehicle in Malta or abroad. 

Applicants caught driving during this period will need to pay an extra €5,000 fine over-and-above criminal penalties applicable to unlicensed drivers. They will also need to pay the remaining grant balance from the date of the infringement till the termination of their driving licence suspension. 

At the end of the five years, applicants will need to apply for a new driving licence, subject to 15 hours worth of driving tuition at a licensed motor school.

Applicants who wish to cancel their licence suspension before the five-year period expires will need to pay Transport Malta the remaining grant balance before they can get their driving licence back. 

For instance, if a person applies to cancel during the 13th month of their grant (out of a total of 60 months), they will need to pay €20,000. If the person cancels their grant in the 49th month, they will have to pay €5,000.

Applicants may be exempted from paying the refund if they need to cancel their scheme membership for health-related reasons, work-related reasons or other reasons that a review board considers to be justified.

Applications are open until June 30, 2026.

The scheme was first announced by Transport Minister Chris Bonett back in April as one of a series of measures aimed at reducing the number of cars on Malta's roads.

At the time, the scheme was intended to be open to all drivers, with the intention of launching it by the summer. Following feedback, the launch was delayed and eligibility was narrowed to focus specifically on young drivers. 

Correction January 6, 2025: A previous version misstated the scheme's total budget.