Few countries in Europe love their cars quite like Luxembourg. The Grand Duchy consistently ranks among the EU countries with the most cars per inhabitant, at 670 per 1,000 people, and anyone who commutes here feels it every day.
Malta, which also sits near the top of that list, has come up with an unusual fix: stop driving for five years and get paid for it. Under its new scheme, drivers aged 30 or under can hand in their licence in exchange for €25,000, paid out in yearly instalments of €5,000. To qualify, applicants must have lived in Malta for at least seven years and held their licence for at least 12 months.
That depends on who you ask. TomTom’s traffic index puts Luxembourg at number 7 on its list of most-congested European countries, with Malta at number one.
Anyone who has tried to cross the capital at rush hour will agree with this ranking, but there seem to be signs of change: 77% of Luxembourg commuters are satisfied with their commute according to the Luxmobil-2025-study.
Carpooling and public transport use have grown faster than solo car use since 2017. Yet, the number of cars on the road has kept climbing along with the population, to over 460.000 in 2026. Free public transport has helped, but it doesn’t seem to be enough on its own to get people out of their cars.
In the end, €25,000 may be a tempting sum, but for most of the people we spoke to, the money was never the issue. As long as the train is packed and the bus doesn’t reach their village, the car stays.
Malta’s scheme might ease traffic on a small island, but in Luxembourg, it seems, the real price of giving up the car isn’t measured in euros.
