Former students must pay for their public transport card use during Covid, court rules

Students were allowed to use their student public transport card for an additional three months during the coronavirus period because they may have suffered study delays, but former students were not. This was the ruling of the Central Appeals Council about some former students who used the cards for a more extended period. They now have to pay several hundreds of euros in public transport costs.

The ruling stated that the students should have known better. The council in Utrecht said that a basic condition for using a student public transport card is that you are enrolled in a course. A former student is no longer enrolled.

Former students believed they were also entitled to the extra three months based on information from the education implementation agency DUO and were initially proven right by the court in The Hague. However, "the basic conditions for being eligible for student finance and the public transport card also apply during the corona period. The information from DUO on this was sufficiently clear," the council said in its ruling published on Monday.