DiscoverEU: Travel Across Europe for Free

DiscoverEU is a community of young 18-years-old travelers that focuses on preparing their travel journeys, sharing their stories while or after traveling or providing tips and suggestions to other young travelers. As such, it works primarily through their official Facebook group. It was born under the initiative of the European Commission, and it is now available to get through on the European Youth Portal.

DiscoverEU: Expand Your Comfort Zone

DiscoverEU is an initiative of the European Union based on a proposal from the European Parliament, which aims at offering young people aged 18 years old a travel experience that will enable them to take advantage of the freedom of movement in the European Union, discover the diversity of Europe while traveling, learn about European cultural heritage and history, connect with people from all over the continent and ultimately discover themselves.

Eligibility criteria

• be 18 years old on 31 December 2021, i.e. those young people born between 1 January 2003 and 31 December 2003 included;
• exceptionally for this round, those young people, who were eligible under the two rounds in 2020, which were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, can apply too. This implies those born between 1 July 2001 (included) and 31 December 2002 (included);
• have the nationality of one of the Member States of the European Union at the time of the award decision;
• fill in the correct ID or passport number on the online application form.

How To Participate

Under this initiative, the European Commission is going to select at least 60 000 young people meeting the eligibility criteria described below.  The application period will be open on Tuesday 12 October 2021 at 12:00 (CEST) until Tuesday 26 October 2021 at 12:00 (CEST).

The European Commission will provide the awarded young people with travel passes to explore the European Union between 1 March 2022 and 28 February 2023 for a maximum period of one month.

The application round to the DiscoverEU initiative is open through a specific online application form on the European Youth Portal.

For more information, see the official DiscoverEU page.

DiscoverEU Photo and Video Contest

As part of the initiative, October 2021 is the month for a Photo and Video Contest.

The theme for October is ‘DiscoverEU is back’ to celebrate the new application round that will start on 12 October. In other words, it’s time to share your greatest travel memories captured on camera!

Here are the rules:

1. Share your photo or short video (max. 15 seconds) on your public Instagram;
2. Add the #DiscoverEU and #Competition hashtags in your post;
3. Tag the European Youth Instagram account @european_youth_eu on the photo or on the social media post;
4. Fill in the survey at: https://europa.eu/youth/discovereu/competition/consent (you will need your application code for that, it can be found in the email you received right after applying to DiscoverEU);
5. Ask your friends to ‘like’ your photo/video.

Ready to be part of DiscoverEU?

Read also

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