Affordable driving license: CDU/CSU motion fails in transport committee

A majority of the Bundestag's Transport Committee has rejected a motion by the CDU/CSU parliamentary group to respond to the rising costs of obtaining a car driving license with a number of measures. The SPD, Alliance 90/The Greens and the FDP as well as the Die Linke group rejected the motion, while the AfD parliamentary group supported it. The motion will now go back to the Bundestag plenary with the recommendation that it be rejected. The vote was similar in the Economic and Family Affairs Committee.

The CDU and CSU had called for the further training of driving instructors to become driving examiners to be made easier and for the recognition requirements to be decoupled from an engineering degree or engineering training. Examiners from the German armed forces as well as the federal and state police should also be allowed to take the driving test at times in order to avoid bottlenecks in test dates. In addition, the Union is in favor of allowing the use of driving simulators in driving license training.

The motion was first debated in the plenary session of the Bundestag in March of this year. The CDU/CSU transport policy spokesperson Florian Müller explained that a class B driving license costs up to 4,500 euros in some places. That is 11 percent more than in 2023 and twice as much as in 2017. Only 20 percent of young people can still afford this, mobility must not become a luxury, it is acutely endangered.

50 percent failure rate

In the transport committee, members of the SPD, Greens and FDP said that the high costs were largely due to the increasing number of failed driving tests. Up to 50 percent of candidates fail the theory part of the test. In principle, there was nothing wrong with driving simulators, but not all driving schools could afford them and the purchase could result in additional costs. The FDP rejected the motion because it gave the false impression that state-imposed fees would make driving licenses more expensive. In addition, the Liberals pointed out that the responsible federal states had opposed opening up the acceptance of driving tests by TÜV and Dekra.

The TÜV association itself also rejects such an opening, as became clear in a Bundestag hearing in June of this year. Its representative, Richard Goebelt, argued that economic interests in a competitive situation would stand in the way of the current practice of offering a comprehensive range of tests. The quality of driving tests could decline.

The CDU/CDU feared that the high cost of driving licenses would impair social participation. In order to take this into account, the driving license system must be revised. The parliamentary group is referring to the digitalization of lessons, simplification of the theoretical and practical training period, approval of more examiners and easing the burden on driving instructors. The Left Party also sees a problem with social participation, but believes that the high failure rates must be seen in the context of the education system.

(anw)