When the government announced a €25,000 incentive for people to surrender their driving licence, the measure was presented as a bold attempt to tackle Malta's chronic traffic congestion. Yet the way the scheme has been designed and the profiles of some of those benefiting from it suggest that it is failing in its purpose.

Some of those who applied for the scheme, as reported by The Malta Independent last week, were not driving in the first place. They held a licence but had long stopped using it, either because they had sold their car or because they had no interest in driving. In such cases, surrendering a licence changes nothing in practical terms. These individuals were already absent from the traffic equation.

This raises an obvious question: how can a scheme aimed at reducing congestion succeed if it rewards people who were never contributing to the problem?

When the initiative was first launched in March 2025, the proposal was to compensate drivers who owned a car and had been driving for at least seven years. That framework, while still debatable in terms of cost-effectiveness, at least attempted to target active motorists. However, by the time the scheme was introduced in its final form earlier this year, the criteria had changed significantly.

Eligibility was extended to people aged 30 or younger who have held a licence for just 12 months and have lived in Malta for seven years. Crucially, owning a car is not a requirement. The result is a scheme that allows individuals who have never driven regularly - or who never owned a car at all - to receive €25,000 in exchange for giving up something they were not using.

It is therefore unsurprising that many applicants appear to fit precisely this profile. For them, the decision is rational. If a person has no intention of driving, surrendering a licence in exchange for a substantial payment is simply an opportunity too good to ignore. Some applicants have openly acknowledged that the money could help them place a deposit on property or offset previous expenses such as driving lessons.

But what may make sense for individuals does not necessarily make sense as public policy.

The scheme was promoted as a tool to reduce congestion. Yet if the beneficiaries were already off the road, the policy does nothing to remove vehicles from Malta's overcrowded streets. Instead, it risks becoming a costly transfer of public funds with little measurable impact on traffic levels.

Meanwhile, the broader trend tells a very different story. Data published by the National Statistics Office shows that in the last quarter of 2025 alone, the number of licensed motor vehicles increased by 3,265. This represents a net average increase of 35 vehicles per day. In other words, while the government is paying thousands of euros to remove hypothetical future drivers from the system, the number of actual cars on the road continues to grow steadily.

The contrast is striking. On one side there is a generous scheme absorbing public funds; on the other, the underlying problem it was meant to address continues to worsen.

None of this should come as a surprise. Critics raised concerns about the effectiveness of the proposal long before it was implemented.

Malta's traffic congestion is a structural problem driven by decades of policy choices, car dependency and relentless growth in vehicle numbers. Addressing it requires coherent long-term planning: improved public transport, serious investment in alternative mobility, better urban planning and measures that genuinely discourage excessive car use.

A policy that distributes €25,000 to people who were never driving in the first place does none of that.

If anything, it risks becoming a costly illustration of how not to approach the country's traffic crisis.