Mobility and social policies: One and the same battle

Why vulnerable populations need to be a priority to make the transportation transition work.

Everybody wants a cleaner future for mobility across the European Union, but policy makers must tackle social issues linked to the transition as energetically as the transport questions themselves, participants at a Mobility Sphere event at the European Parliament in Brussels in May 2025 heard.

“You can’t really differentiate between transport and social policy,” said Nihan Akyelken, an Economic and Social Geographer at the University of Oxford. “Transport and social policies should work in tandem with each other.”

Mobility, she went on, cannot be seen “independently of other rights, such as the right to shelter”, adding that access to mobility is socially and spatially uneven.

Sometimes we miss just how much transport and social aspects are intertwined, said Elisabeth Kotthaus, Head of Unit, Social Aspects, Passenger Rights and Equal Opportunities, DG MOVE.

Transport is “often neglected because it’s something we have every day, and it’s just there”, she said. “Other things are much more chic and much more sexy than transport, but in the end nothing works if you don't have the mobility for every day and for our social needs.”

The European Commission already has policies for vulnerable energy users and energy poverty, but not for transport poverty, she remarked.

The Commission therefore launched a study on the topic, she said, highlighting key conditions for mobility: affordability, availability and accessibility – with an emphasis also on safety and security.

Draft recommendations to EU member states include promoting zero emission vehicles, subsidies for purchase of social leasing schemes, alternative fuel charging infrastructure or public transport services, extension of existing or new public transport in low income underserved areas, Kotthaus said.

Others are on-demand transport services, mainly in sparsely populated rural remote areas where public transport is not a viable option, app-based shared mobility with targeted subsidies, as well as social tickets such as digital wallet, mobility vouchers or reduced tariff tickets for public transport for vulnerable low income transport users.

“One important condition is that they must be targeted to vulnerable groups,” she said.

Thierry Mallet, Chairman and CEO, Transdev Group, said such targeting should include ticket prices. Surveys show that only about 11 percent of people state that public transport is “too expensive” for them, he told the conference.

So, instead of subsidizing ticket prices across the board, or even making public transport free for everybody, policy makers should give a special tariff only for the 11 percent of people who need it. Everything else, he said, meant “losing revenue” that could otherwise be used for people who need it the most.

“It’s very important that in any policy we have real prices, so the rich pay the price they should pay, and we help those who need support.”

Meanwhile, the Social Climate Fund – the first EU fund with the explicit purpose of alleviating potential energy and transport poverty – creates “a unique opportunity” because some of its 86 billion euros will be targeted towards transport, the panelists in Brussels agreed.