Which EU Countries Send the Most Students on International Internships? A 2025 Data Analysis

Spain accounts for more Erasmus+ mobility participants than any other country in the programme's history. Between 2014 and 2024, Spanish students and staff generated 2.23 million Erasmus+ participations. Italy follows with 1.81 million, Germany with 1.78 million, and France with 1.65 million. Those four countries alone represent more than half of all Erasmus+ mobility activity across the period. But the moment you adjust for population size, the ranking changes substantially. Malta, Cyprus, Luxembourg, and Ireland consistently outperform their larger neighbours on a per-student basis. And the reasons why reveal as much about institutional design as they do about national culture.

This analysis draws on Erasmus+ programme data, European Commission annual reports, Eurostat learning mobility statistics, and national agency factsheets to construct the most current comparative picture of which EU member states are sending students abroad for traineeships and study. The traineeship strand, which covers work placements and internships, receives particular attention, since it is the most directly relevant to institutional planning for universities, government mobility offices, and placement professionals working in the Internship Abroad network.

The Programme Backdrop: A Decade of Growth

Erasmus+ is now the EU's largest educational investment. The 2021-2027 programme generation carries a budget of EUR 26.2 billion, a 78% increase on the previous cycle. The results are visible in participation: in 2023, Erasmus+ supported over 1.3 million learning opportunities abroad and funded some 32,000 projects, with a programme budget exceeding EUR 4.5 billion for that year alone, a 12.5% increase on 2022. By 2024, annual participation had risen further to 1.44 million, the highest level the programme has ever recorded.

Within that headline figure, higher education accounts for the largest share by budget and the most established data trail. The higher education component includes two distinct mobility types: study periods, where students spend a semester or academic year at a partner institution, and traineeships, which cover work placements and internships at companies or organisations in another participating country. The two have always been funded differently, with traineeship grants running slightly higher than study grants in most national agency frameworks to reflect the costs of transitioning into a professional context abroad.

Absolute Leaders: Spain, Italy, Germany, France

The four largest sending countries by absolute participation between 2014 and 2024 are Spain (2.23 million participants), Italy (1.81 million), Germany (1.78 million), and France (1.65 million). These figures span all sectors and include students, staff, trainees, youth workers, and other programme participants, not only higher education students. But the pattern holds when you narrow to higher education mobility alone.

Spain: The Structural Exporter

Spain's dominance reflects decades of structural integration of Erasmus+ into university culture. Spanish universities have high student participation rates partly because youth unemployment has historically been among the highest in the EU, giving students a strong material incentive to acquire international experience. The programme is well understood at secondary school level in Spain, meaning students arrive at university already oriented toward it. Several Spanish universities have also made some form of international experience a de facto expectation, if not a formal requirement, for certain degree programmes.

Spain is also a net exporter. It sends more students and staff abroad than it receives, which reflects both the programme culture described above and the relative cost advantage of studying or training in Spain for inbound students, which suppresses inbound demand from higher-cost countries. Students from the Netherlands, Germany or Denmark face lower costs in Madrid or Barcelona than at home, but those countries' students have less financial pressure to leave, moderating inbound flows relative to outbound ones from Spain.

Italy and France: Sending and Receiving in Balance

Italy's Erasmus+ national budget for higher education reached EUR 139.4 million in 2023, one of the larger national envelopes in the programme. Italian universities have deep institutional familiarity with the programme, and some sectors, particularly design, fashion, architecture, and business, produce strong employer networks outside Italy that pull students into international traineeships naturally. Italy is broadly a net exporter, though the margin is narrower than Spain.

France presents a more complex picture. It ranks fourth in absolute Erasmus+ participation but is a structural net importer, meaning it receives more Erasmus+ participants than it sends. France's strong reputation as an educational and cultural destination, its large higher education system, and the draw of institutions such as Sciences Po, HEC, and the Grandes Ecoles mean significant inbound flows. French outbound mobility, while large in absolute terms, tends to trail other countries of comparable economic scale when adjusted for the total student population.

Germany: The Largest Net Importer

Germany's Erasmus+ participation is extremely high in absolute terms, but it is the programme's largest net importer, receiving considerably more participants than it sends. This is not primarily a policy failure. Germany's research and engineering universities, its apprenticeship culture, and its large economy make it one of Europe's most attractive destinations for incoming Erasmus+ students and trainees. The country's outbound mobility is also affected by the structure of German higher education: the Praxissemester, a mandatory practical semester in many German universities, tends to be completed domestically or at companies with which the university has an established relationship, limiting the demand for Erasmus+ traineeships as a delivery vehicle.

For institutions looking to send students to Germany, this creates an important insight. Germany is an absorber of international internship students, not primarily a sender. Universities in the German market serve as recruitment targets, not the outbound funnel. The equivalent funnel in German terms runs through the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, the Nordic countries, and Southern Europe, each of which sends students to Germany under Erasmus+ or bilateral agreements.

The Per-Capita Picture: Small Countries That Punch Above Their Weight

Absolute participation rankings flatter large countries by design. A more instructive measure for institutional benchmarking is the proportion of the total student population that participates in outbound mobility in any given year. On this measure, the rankings shift dramatically.

Ireland, Malta, Luxembourg, and Cyprus consistently appear at or near the top of per-capita outbound Erasmus+ mobility tables. Ireland's position is partly structural: as an English-speaking country in the EU, Irish students have high language accessibility to internship destinations in Europe, and the country's own employer market, while strong, is concentrated in a relatively small number of sectors (technology, pharmaceuticals, financial services). Going abroad exposes Irish students to a broader range of professional contexts than they would find at home. Irish universities have also invested heavily in Erasmus+ office capacity, which correlates with higher student participation rates.

Malta and Cyprus reflect a different dynamic: as small island economies, their universities have limited domestic internship ecosystems, and government mobility strategies in both countries explicitly prioritise outbound mobility as a core policy instrument. The result is that the share of students who engage in Erasmus+ traineeships or study periods is substantially higher than in large continental economies, even though the absolute numbers appear tiny by comparison.

Country	Cumulative Erasmus+ 2014-2024	Mobility Flow	Key Driver
Spain	2.23 million	Net exporter	Deep programme culture, high youth unemployment incentive, language access
Italy	1.81 million	Net exporter	Large national budget, strong creative and professional networks abroad
Germany	1.78 million	Net importer	Strong destination appeal; domestic Praxissemester reduces outbound demand
France	1.65 million	Net importer	High inbound flows to Grandes Ecoles; outbound below expected for population size
Netherlands	~42,000 (2023 alone)	Broadly balanced	Strong HE internationalisation policy; Nuffic coordination; high English proficiency
Poland	Significant	Net importer	Major receiving destination; outbound growing from comparatively low base
Ireland	Moderate, high per capita	Net exporter	English-speaking advantage, narrow domestic sector, strong institutional investment
Malta / Cyprus	Small absolute, high per capita	Net exporter	Small island economies, explicit outbound mobility policy priority

The Traineeship Strand: What the Internship-Specific Data Shows

Traineeships, the Erasmus+ umbrella term for internship and work placement mobility, make up approximately 15 to 20 percent of total higher education Erasmus+ mobility by participant count. That share has grown steadily across the 2021-2027 programme generation as universities have integrated work-based learning more formally into degree programmes and as national agencies have increased traineeship-specific funding allocations.

The traineeship breakdown by country does not always mirror the overall mobility ranking. Countries with strong Work-Integrated Learning cultures, or those with a high proportion of applied science, engineering and vocational degree programmes, tend to show higher traineeship rates relative to their overall Erasmus+ participation. Germany and the Netherlands both have historically high traineeship engagement within Erasmus+, reflecting the mandatory placement requirements embedded in many of their university programmes. The Netherlands in particular has seen significant traineeship activity through its HBO (higher professional education) sector, where internship periods are compulsory and the Erasmus+ traineeship grant is used as a direct funding vehicle by many institutions.

Spain and Italy, despite leading in total Erasmus+ participation, have historically had a higher study-period-to-traineeship ratio than countries in Northern and Central Europe. This is changing as Southern European universities introduce more structured placement years, but the gap remains visible in the data.

Poland and Romania: The Rising Senders

Poland and Romania are both net importers in Erasmus+ terms, receiving more participants than they send. But both countries have seen consistent growth in outbound participation over the past five years, and the growth in traineeship mobility specifically has been notable. Polish outbound traineeship numbers have been supported by a combination of Erasmus+ funding and domestic policy, including the Polish government's investment in international mobility as part of its higher education modernisation agenda. For programme administrators and university coordinators working with Polish students, this represents a market that is transitioning from primarily domestic to increasingly internationally oriented.

What Drives the Gap: Institutional Factors That Universities Control

The country-level data points to a pattern that has been consistent across multiple Erasmus+ programme generations: per-student participation rates correlate most strongly with institutional investment in mobility infrastructure, not with national income, language proficiency, or cultural disposition. The countries and universities with the highest outbound mobility rates have, in almost all cases, built systematic structures that make going abroad the path of least resistance rather than an exceptional choice.

The key institutional variables that appear repeatedly in high-performing systems are these:

• Dedicated mobility offices with active outreach. Universities where the international office proactively recruits students into mobility windows, rather than waiting for applications, consistently show higher participation rates. The difference between a passive information function and an active recruitment operation can shift participation rates by several percentage points.
• Full ECTS recognition, implemented in practice. Students who fear losing academic credit if they go abroad do not go abroad. Countries and institutions that have implemented the Bologna credit recognition framework in a way students actually trust, not merely on paper, show higher mobility. This remains a significant gap in several otherwise high-performing countries. For a detailed analysis of how ECTS recognition works in practice across European countries, see our ECTS credit recognition guide.
• Financial support that bridges the Erasmus+ gap. The Erasmus+ traineeship grant is meaningful but rarely sufficient to cover the full cost differential of living abroad. Universities and national programmes that supplement the grant, whether through institutional funds, co-funded national schemes, or bilateral employer agreements, reliably achieve higher participation. This point connects directly to the role that government mobility offices play in closing the affordability gap.
• Programme design that embeds mobility as a normal option. Where internship periods or study semesters abroad are advertised as standard elements of a degree programme, and where the administrative burden of organising them falls on the institution rather than the student, participation is higher. Germany's Praxissemester and the Dutch HBO internship semester demonstrate this even within domestic contexts; the extension of that logic to international settings is what separates the high-performing systems.

For university international offices reviewing their own outbound mobility performance, the comparison across EU countries offers a useful diagnostic. A French university that trails the EU average on outbound traineeship participation is not facing a structural national disadvantage: it is likely facing a set of institutional bottlenecks that have documented solutions in the higher-performing systems. The same applies in both directions.

The Bologna Target: Still Distant for Most Countries

The Bologna Process's 20% student mobility target, set in 2009 and nominally due for achievement by 2020, remains unreached for the vast majority of EU member states. The European Higher Education Area's 2024 implementation report placed actual EU-wide mobility at approximately 9.4%, less than half the target, with only four of 49 Bologna signatory countries having demonstrably achieved or exceeded it. The countries that have come closest tend to be the small per-capita leaders identified above, plus a handful of Nordic and Central European systems with strong mobility cultures and supplementary national funding.

The gap has generated significant policy attention but comparatively little practical change at the institutional level, where the decisions about how to fund, market, and operationally support outbound mobility ultimately get made. The European Commission's 2023 annual report on the programme explicitly flagged the persistence of the mobility gap as a policy priority for the remainder of the 2021-2027 cycle, and national agencies across the EU have been directed to strengthen outreach and support mechanisms with a particular focus on students from disadvantaged backgrounds, who remain systematically underrepresented in Erasmus+ mobility despite explicit inclusion provisions in the current programme regulation.

Implications for Placement Professionals and University Coordinators

The country-level data is not merely of academic interest. For institutions and professionals working in international internship placement, it maps the supply side of the market: which countries have large volumes of students actively seeking international placements, which have the institutional infrastructure to support them, and which are underserved by existing placement networks.

The Netherlands, despite being a relatively small country, generated over 42,000 Erasmus+ participants in 2023 alone, a figure that underscores the outsized role Dutch universities play in the international student pipeline. For placement partners in Europe looking to receive Dutch interns, the internshipabroad.nl platform serves as the institutional entry point. The equivalent for UK students is internshipabroad.uk, for Belgian students internshipabroad.be, and for Czech students internshipabroad.cz.

The data also points to where growth is occurring fastest. Poland's rising outbound numbers represent a market in transition. The combination of a large graduate population, improving English proficiency, and increasing Erasmus+ funding channelled into traineeship mobility suggests that Polish student outbound flows will continue growing through the remainder of the decade. Institutions not yet engaged with the Polish sending market may find that the window for early positioning is closing. Our analysis of Poland's international internship outlook provides more detailed context on what is driving that transition.