Green Travel Top-Up: How Erasmus+ Rewards Low-Emission Travel to Your Course

Erasmus+ pays more if you get to your course by train instead of plane — here’s exactly how the green travel top-up works, with the real numbers.

What actually counts as “green travel”

The Programme Guide defines it precisely: “travel that uses low emissions means of transport for at least half of the round trip, such as bus, train, bike, or car-pooling.” Boat travel counts too, but only if it’s combined with another low-emissions leg — a ferry on its own doesn’t qualify. The test isn’t the destination, it’s how you get there: at least half the round trip has to be by one of these methods.

Below 500km it’s the expectation, not just an option

The guide sets a distance-based default: “Below 500 KM, participants will, as a general rule, travel with low-emissions means of transport.” Past that distance, it shifts from expectation to encouragement — participants are “strongly encouraged to use a combination of different modes of transport to make their travel more sustainable,” recognising that a train replacing a short-haul flight is a very different proposition than one replacing a transcontinental one.

The actual money: higher unit costs by distance

Green travel isn’t just goodwill — it pays a higher fixed travel grant at every distance band up to 4,000km:

• 10–99 km: €56 green vs €28 standard
• 100–499 km: €285 vs €211
• 500–1,999 km: €417 vs €309
• 2,000–2,999 km: €535 vs €395
• 3,000–3,999 km: €785 vs €580
• 4,000–7,999 km: €1,188 (same for both)
• 8,000 km or more: €1,735 (same for both)

The gap disappears past 4,000km — at that distance, low-emission overland travel usually isn’t realistic, so the guide doesn’t try to incentivise it. Distance itself is measured as the one-way air distance between origin and activity venue, using the European Commission’s own distance calculator, regardless of which transport mode you actually choose.

The other benefit: more travel days covered

Slower transport needs more time, and the guide accounts for it directly: “a maximum of two travel days for participants and accompanying persons receiving non-green travel grant, and a maximum of six travel days in case of a green travel grant.” That’s subsistence support — meals, accommodation — for the extra days a multi-leg train or bus journey can add on either side of the activity, not just the travel grant itself.

When green travel gets genuinely expensive

Sometimes the sustainable option costs more than any unit rate covers — long-distance rail across multiple countries can be pricier than a short flight. For exactly this case, the guide has a fallback: if standard unit costs don’t cover at least 70% of real travel costs, beneficiaries can claim “exceptional costs for expensive travel” instead, reimbursed at 80% of actual eligible costs.

What this means if you’re planning a course with us

None of this changes which course fits your school — it changes how your coordinator budgets the trip. If your school is under roughly 500km from Antalya, Istanbul, Izmir, Mersin, Budapest, Bremen or Rome, planning the journey by train or coach isn’t just the sustainable choice, it’s the one the Programme Guide expects by default and pays more for. Our course dates page lists where and when each course runs, and our earlier piece on how KA1 funding reaches a school covers where the travel grant fits into the wider budget.