An Interrail ticket makes it possible to cross the whole of Europe by train, visiting up to 30 countries and staying at each stop for as long as you like. This summer, around 14,500 young Europeans will have the opportunity to do just that – free of charge. They all applied to the second round of the EU’s DiscoverEU initiative and have now been notified that they have won an Interrail ticket. The next application round opens in the summer.

Four months before the European Parliament election, the draw also provides an insight into levels of enthusiasm for the EU among young adults: the countries with a particularly high number of applicants and those where interest in exploring Europe was lukewarm at best.

Naturally enough, in absolute terms Germany, as the largest EU member, had the most applicants: here a good 14,300 young men and women applied to DiscoverEU, more than from any other country.

But the picture is very different if we consider the number of applicants as a proportion of the number of 18-year-olds in each country – for only 18-year-olds were eligible. Viewed this way, the greatest interest in the scheme came from Malta, Portugal and Ireland. In Malta there were a record 93 applications per thousand 18-year-olds with EU citizenship.

Demand was high in Gr