Fact check: Which country is the safest in Europe?

A politician in Spain's ruling party, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), recently claimed that the country is one of the safest in the world during a plenary session in the lower house of the Spanish parliament.

Justice Minister Félix Bolaños criticised Miguel Tellado, a Spanish MP and member of the conservative People's Party (Partido Popular), for the language he used in parliament while attacking the government for alleged corruption. He said it was borrowed straight from the far-right Vox party.

"You don't realise that the underlying message of your speech, identifying immigration with crime, talking about an illegitimate government, talking about a public safety problem in our country, which is one of the countries with the highest public safety ratings in the world... you don't realise that your speech only serves to inflame the far right," Bolaños said in the heated exchange.

To verify the validity of his claims about the safety of Spain and how the rest of Europe compares, we can take a look at different indices, such as the Global Peace Index, produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace.

It measures the levels of societal safety and security, the extent of domestic and international conflict, and the degree of militarisation in a given country. The lower the score, the more peaceful a country.

In its 2025 edition, the index ranked Spain as the 25th safest country in the world, out of the 163 analysed countries.

In fact, Europe dominated the top of the table: four of the top five safest countries in the world were European— namely Iceland, Ireland, Austria and Switzerland—and eight European countries made the top 10 with Portugal, Denmark, Slovenia and Finland.

Eurostat can also shed light on which European Union countries are considered the safest: One of the "quality of life" indicators that it records is physical safety, covering rates of homicide, violence and vandalism.

In the most recent dataset, Luxembourg had the lowest number of recorded homicides relative to its population size and per 100,000 people, standing at 0.32.

Italy (0.48), Slovenia (0.52), the Czech Republic (0.53) and Austria (0.61) came next, with Spain coming in as the sixth lowest (0.63).

The most "dangerous" countries using this metric are Latvia (4.88), Lithuania (3.54) and Estonia (2.78).

Our colleagues at Europe in Motion also recently reported on perceived crime, violence and vandalism in people's neighbourhoods, based on Eurostat data.

Here, Croatia, Lithuania and Poland are seen as the safest countries, based on citizens' experiences. Only 1.4% of Croatian citizens reported any anti-social activity, compared to 20.9% in Greece, the highest rate.

While Spain does have some of the worst rates when looking at these particular figures (13.6%), it's still true that it is generally among the safest countries in the world.

Nevertheless, a briefing published in February by the European Parliamentary Research Group noted that "violence by criminals involved in organised crime is increasing in the EU, in terms of frequency, severity, visibility and impact."

"Even though Europe is still one of the continents least affected by organised crime, criminal networks are expected to increase their global reach, become more fluid and digitalised, and thus more open to diversity and competition," it added, noting that the EU has already taken measures to turn the tide, such as introducing new legal and investigative frameworks to tackle violence.