Transport, Marine Le Pen
Everyday transport: Free trains for 18-25 year-olds at off-peak hours (2022 statement)
Direction of change: increase, compared with current law.
The lever. Everyday journeys: fares and free travel on buses, trams, metros and TER regional trains, season tickets and passes, metropolitan RER networks, on-demand transport and services in rural areas. Direction rule: ↑ cheaper public transport or wider service.
« Ce que je souhaiterais faire si je suis élue, c’est la gratuité des transports dans le train pour les 18-25 ans, aux heures creuses car je pense que les jeunes sont plus souples dans leurs horaires »1Translation by the editorsWhat I would like to do if I am elected is free train travel for 18-25 year-olds, at off-peak hours, because I think young people are more flexible in their schedules
Words of Marine Le Pen, franceinfo, émission « 20h22 sur Twitch », 7 February 2022. Position taken from public statements, not from a written programme.
No programme released. Positions taken from public statements, words of associates or documents of the candidate’s party, each dated and sourced; last recorded on 18 October 2026.
Encoding
No cost-schedule parameter for this position: see the costing for the reason.
Costing
Announced by the candidate
not announced
The cited source does not cost this measure.
Published costings
none
No external costing of this position recorded to date.
Our calculation
not costed
Free train travel for 18-25-year-olds at off-peak times, TER and main lines combined: no source read costs rail revenue from this age group. A measure with no lever of its own in the grid, cited here: « Enfin, une mesure dont je n'avais pas encore parlé, la gratuité du permis de conduire pour les jeunes au casier judiciaire vierge » [“Finally, a measure I had not yet mentioned: free driving licences for young people with a clean criminal record”] (press conference of 6 October 2026, video published on her official YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYwoEaAKdeE&t=2094s, editors' transcription). Neither cost nor number of beneficiaries announced, and the cost schedule has neither parameter nor option for the driving licence: not costed.
Current law, sources and limits of the cost schedule
Current law. Mobility organising authorities (intermunicipal bodies, regions, Île-de-France Mobilités) define pricing policy and set fares (Code des transports, art. L. 1221-5). Employers cover half of their employees' public transport season ticket (Code du travail, art. L. 3261-2; 75% for public employees since 1 September 2023), i.e. €1,284m in 2023, and those with 11 or more employees pay the versement mobilité (mobility levy) (€11.3bn in 2023). In 2019, fare revenue covered 41% of the operating expenditure of urban public transport, about €5.7bn out of €13.9bn; 46 areas offer entirely free transport (Cour des comptes, September 2025). Metropolitan regional express services (SERM) have had a legal framework since the act of 27 December 2023.
Horizon. Full year, €bn per year, in 2019 euros (2017 for Île-de-France alone), not updated to the 2032 horizon. Cost for general government as a whole, whichever authority bears it.
Limits. Static costing: free public transport costs first of all the lost fare revenue, offset by the budget of the transport authorities (classified here as spending). Not counted: the additional service that higher ridership would require (the Cour des comptes considers free transport risky for large networks), savings on ticketing and inspection (€250m at best in Île-de-France according to the Senate), or the saving made by employers on their contribution to season tickets (€1,284m in 2023, included in fare revenue); shifting this share onto the versement mobilité (mobility levy) is a means of funding, not a reduction in cost. The first three options do not add up: all of France = Île-de-France + the rest of France, for different years (€5.7bn in 2019 versus 3.6 + 1.5 = €5.1bn). The fourth, the 28 networks outside Île-de-France with a metro or tramway (€1,254m of revenue in 2019 out of €1,638m outside Île-de-France, Cour des comptes, table no. 1), is the best approximation read for the networks of the métropoles outside Île-de-France: it counts a few conurbations that are not métropoles and leaves out métropoles with neither metro nor tramway; it is included in the rest of France and does not add to the other options. Outside the scope for lack of a source read: TER and regional trains, intercity coaches, partial free transport (young people, weekends; Lille and Nantes give local examples at €8m and €16m per year), fare reductions, rail pass, metropolitan RER (major projects are costed at the announced amount).
- Cour des comptes, La contribution des usagers au financement des transports collectifs urbains, synthèse (p. 10), 2025-09-15: « Les recettes tarifaires ne couvraient ainsi que 41 % des dépenses de fonctionnement des réseaux de transport en 2019, dernière année à laquelle ce ratio a été mesuré : elles représentaient ainsi environ 5,7 Md€ sur un total de dépenses de 13,9 Md€ (8,5 Md€ en Île-de-France ; 4,9 Md€ en province). »
- Cour des comptes, même rapport, p. 46 (tableau n° 1, recettes et dépenses par catégorie de réseaux, 2019), 2025-09-15: « Tableau n° 1 : estimation du taux de couverture des dépenses de fonctionnement par les recettes tarifaires, 2019 […] Hors IDF : 201 1 638 4 949 33,1 % […] dont avec métro/tram (A+) 28 1 254 3 296 38,0 % […] dont sans métro ni tramway (A) 71 326 1 333 24,5 % »
- Cour des comptes, même rapport, p. 55 (fraude hors Île-de-France, note 80), 2025-09-15: « Hors Île-de-France, il ne semble pas exister de chiffrage précis. […] Calcul effectué en supposant des recettes tarifaires globales de 1,5 Md€, soit le niveau de 2019 »
- Cour des comptes, même rapport, p. 24, 48, 64 et 66 (tarifs, prise en charge employeur, versement mobilité, réseaux gratuits), 2025-09-15: « L’article L. 1221-5 du code des transports prévoit que « l’autorité organisatrice définit la politique tarifaire […] » et qu’elle « fixe ou homologue des tarifs » ; En 2023 sur l’ensemble du territoire, cette aide représentait 1 284 M€ ; En 2023, le VM s’élève à 11,3 Md€ ; Tableau n° 4 : population des 46 territoires ayant choisi la gratuité »
- Sénat, rapport d'information n° 744 (2018-2019), Gratuité des transports collectifs, fausse bonne idée ou révolution écologique et sociale des mobilités ? (p. 82-83), 2019-09-25: « mettre en place la gratuité totale des transports en Île-de-France impliquerait un renoncement à 3,6 milliards d’euros de recettes. Sur cette somme, 2,7 milliards d’euros correspondent aux recettes qui proviennent directement des voyageurs […] et 926 millions d’euros correspondent au remboursement par les employeurs de la moitié des abonnements de leurs salariés. »
How to read these amounts. These are static costs and revenues, with no feedback effect, over a full year: nothing on growth, employment or the revenue that economic activity would gain or lose. A higher net cost does not on its own make a worse policy, nor net savings a better one: each programme rests on an economic model (demand-led stimulus, lower compulsory levies, consolidation of the public accounts…) that the cost schedule does not settle. GDP itself measures a volume of activity, not well-being or the usefulness of what is produced. Economic models and feedback effects.
- franceinfo, émission « 20h22 sur Twitch », 7 February 2022. Words of Marine Le Pen. Position taken from public statements, not from a written programme. Read the source (franceinfo, émission « 20h22 sur Twitch »).
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