Salzburger Nachrichten reported six people took advantage of the promotion this weekend at the Frequency Festival.
Last month, around 30 attendees of the Electric Love festival took up the offer of free ink for free rail links. However, critics argue that the scheme is taking advantage of young people.
Austria’s Climate Minister, Leonore Gewessler, who was in attendance at the festival in St Pölten, said all those agreeing to get tattoos did so clearheadedly and willingly.
“This has been carried out with great care. It is only done during daylight and only offered to people over the age of 18,” she told a local TV station.
However, the politician came under fire after she shared the photo of a temporary tattoo on social media that read: “Gewessler takes the lead”.
The editor of Vienna Newspaper Falter, Florian Klenk, accused her of extreme “cynicism”, using young people’s skin to campaign for political gains.
The organisation defended the stunt, saying tattoo artists were in demand.
“The feedback at the festivals was extremely positive,” Jakob Lambert, director of One Mobility GmbH, told news agency APA.
One Mobility is the operator of the KlimaTicket initiative,a unified public transport pass priced at €1,095 ($2000) a year.
“None of them [festival-goers] got the first tattoo of their lives, it was more like people with a few tattoos agreed to get one more,” Lambert said.
Fifteen years after it was first proposed, the KlimaTicket went on sale in 2021. Translating as “climate ticket”, the scheme was intended to take Austrians off the road and put them onto public transport, to fight emissions and climate change.
It works out at roughly $6 a day for unlimited travel and 245,000 people currently have a KlimaTicket in Austria.
