30 days of free travel? This is what the European Commission proposes to offer to 35,000 young people in the European Union, through the traditional DiscoveryEU competition, by giving away as many InterRail passes, which will make it possible to travel for the next few months free of charge for a maximum of thirty days on mainland rail networks and some ferries. The registration platform opened on Wednesday.
As specified on the registration platform, only Europeans born between July 1, 2004 (inclusive) and June 30, 2005 (inclusive) can take advantage of it. It is possible to apply alone or with friends (with a maximum for each group of four people), until March 29. Registration, which consists of indicating your identity card or passport number, ends with a quiz of a few questions about Europe.
A selection according to the answers of the quiz
The quiz is not to be taken lightly. The organizers “will rank the candidates by country, according to their answers to the quiz and the subsidiary question”, it is indicated in the FAQ of the registration platform. “At least 35,000 young people will be selected from among the candidates who answered the quiz correctly and who answered the subsidiary question most correctly,” it continued. A certain number of “winners” is fixed per country, so that everyone can benefit from them.
The selected candidates will then be able to travel “at least 1 day and at most 1 month and take place between June 15, 2023 (first departure date) and September 30, 2024 (last return date)”, indicates the European Commission. Two options will be offered to the lucky ones: a fixed option, limiting the number of destinations to two countries or cities of the same country; or the flexible option, which leaves the possibility of visiting all countries, provided you do not travel for more than 7 days.