Transport Malta will be issuing decision letters to those who applied for its Driving Licence Surrender Scheme "in the coming weeks," this newsroom can confirm. Approved applicants will eventually be asked to surrender their driving licence and in return receive the first of five €5,000 lump sums.

Transport Malta told The Malta Independent that "Letters notifying applicants of the approval or rejection of their applications will be issued in the coming weeks."

The Malta Independent enquired about the state of the Driving Licence Surrender Scheme after it went unmentioned in last Monday's Budget 2027 speech by Finance Minister Clyde Caruana, was not listed in the budget's subsequent financial estimates, and after an applicant reached out to this newsroom to check on its status in fears that it had been discreetly shelved.

The authority added that it "has reviewed all applications, completed the necessary checks and verifications, and interviewed the applicants."

However, it seems that applicant interviews were not conducted - despite Transport Malta's response to this newsroom. Two applicants, who preferred to remain anonymous, told The Malta Independent was told that they had not been interviewed for this scheme and have been effectively left in the dark on the status of their applications.

One of these applicants, let's name her Marija, had reached out to this newsroom scared that Transport Malta's silence coupled with the scheme's omission from Finance Minister Caruana's budget speech meant that the Driving Licence Surrender Scheme had been quietly scrapped. She also informed The Malta Independent that the URL to the scheme's dedicated page on Transport Malta had also been taken down, which this newsroom confirmed.

Applications for this scheme were set to open on New Year's Day, but went online on 6 January without any reason given for its delayed launch. They remained open till 30 June 2026, now over four months ago.

Applicants told this newsroom that since they've submitted their applications to surrender their driving licences, they have effectively been left in the dark on the status of their applications.

Earlier this March, The Malta Independent reached out to three individuals who signed up for this scheme, to receive the €25,000 over the next few years, and weren't driving on the roads anyway.

This newsroom reached out to these three once again to ask them for an update on their applications. Two of them, who we'll refer to as Marija and Chris, said they are still waiting for an update from Transport Malta on their applications. The other individual, who we'll call Doris, said that she has since withdrawn her application because "buses have become too overcrowded" and so she intends to start using her driving licence.

Chris told this newsroom that "that damn licence scheme has pissed me off all year" as Transport Malta has left him in limbo. He said that the authority only contacted him so that he confirms his enrolment at the University of Malta, as a student, but "other than that, they have refused to give any sort of update."

"I applied in January, so it has been 10 months of silence," Chris said, "So, no approval or rejection, just pending."

Marija said that she too has not been notified on the status of her application as of late October, even though she applied to surrender her licence very soon after the application window opened.

"I never received confirmation that my application has been accepted - only that it is being vetted," Marija said.

She told The Malta Independent that she asked Transport Malta for an update on her application during the summer. She was given an almost identical response to what Chris had received when he similarly enquired about his application, also during the summer.

Both individuals were told that "All applications have been vetted and passed to the Board Section" and that they would be given an update once this information was relayed to the contact person. This follow-up never came.

The Driving Licence Surrender Scheme was announced in December 2025 by Transport Minister Chris Bonett as an attempt to curb car use among youths. This scheme - which targets young people not older than 30 - had its application window open for the first half of 2026 to allow any such youths the opportunity to give up their driving licence for five years in exchange for €25,000 from the State.

Through this new national scheme, any approved applicants will receive the first €5,000 instalment upon surrendering their driving licence to Transport Malta. Subsequent grant payments of €5,000 each will then be scheduled for the following four respective anniversaries of this first instalment. For this first cohort, who applied this year, these grant payments will run till 2030.

In January, this newsroom was informed by Transport Malta itself that the Driving Licence Surrender Scheme was intended to be budgeted at €5 million each year, meaning that the scheme would amount to €25 million should applications be re-opened each year and be fully exhausted.

At most, this budget allows up to 1,000 people to temporarily give up their licence in exchange for cash. Any person who has surrendered their driving licence may request to retrieve their driving licence early, though this will come at a cost equal to the sum that Transport Malta is left to owe them. This means that, in theory, applicants can earn a profit of at least €5,000 if they surrender their licence, but only honour this commitment for over half the stipulated duration.

According to the National Statistics Office, there were 463,734 licensed motor vehicles across the Maltese islands as of the end of Q2 2026; this total stock was increasing at a net average rate of 34 motor vehicle per day during this period.

The total number of people who applied for this scheme, this year, remains unknown, despite parliamentarians asking the Minister for Sustainable Mobility, Chris Bonett, to divulge the exact number of applications on several occasions.

On 30 March, Minister Bonett refused to divulge exactly how many applications this scheme received up until that point. When asked to share this figure through a parliamentary question (PQ) made by Opposition MP Bernice Bonello, he referred Bonello to the same question she made the month prior and stated that his previous reply was sufficiently clear. Earlier this February, Bonett had said that applications by that point had accounted for "more than 50%" of the scheme's fund allocation, though did not provide any precise numbers.

PN MP Bonello has asked Minister Bonett to disclose the total number of applications three times this legislature, following May's general election and after the application window closed - once in July and twice more this October. Every time, Bonett said that he would give this response during another sitting.

When the scheme was first announced in March 2025, the original plan was to offer the money to licence holders who own a car and have been driving in Malta for at last seven years, irrespective of age. However, when the scheme was finally released last January, the eligibility criteria were amended to include people aged 30 or younger who have had a driving license for at least 12 months and have resided in Malta for at least seven years. Notably, one does not need to own a car to partake in this scheme.

Applications are being prioritised on a first come, first served basis.