Guide
The safest countries in Europe, measured by the one number that compares
By Covered Abroad Research Desk · Last verified July 2026
The table, and why homicide is the honest yardstick
Crime comparisons across borders are mostly noise, for a reason criminologists state plainly: recorded theft, assault and burglary measure reporting habits and police practice as much as crime itself. The exception is intentional homicide — bodies are counted the same way everywhere — which is why it anchors every serious international comparison, including ours. Eurostat's 2023 figures per 100,000 inhabitants:
| Country | Homicides per 100,000 (2023) |
|---|---|
| Malta | 0.37 |
| Italy | 0.57 |
| Spain | 0.69 |
| Netherlands | 0.70 |
| Portugal | 0.70 |
| Greece | 0.73 |
| Germany | 0.80 |
| Austria | 0.82 |
| France | 1.30 |
| Belgium | 1.41 |
The spread runs from Malta's 0.37 to Belgium's 1.41 — and the honest headline is how narrow that band is. Every destination on this site sits in the world's safest tier, and the differences between them are smaller than the differences between neighbourhoods inside any one of them.
Source: Eurostat, intentional homicide (crim_off_cat, ICCS0101), per hundred thousand, 2023, read 29 August 2026.
The American context: a different axis entirely
For the US readers this site serves, the comparison that matters is not Malta versus Belgium — it is Europe versus home. The CDC's own FastStats page puts the US homicide rate at 5.9 per 100,000 (20,162 deaths, National Vital Statistics data). Set against the table above: four times Belgium, our highest, and sixteen times Malta, our lowest. Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands — the three biggest expat destinations in our set — all run at roughly one-eighth the US rate.
Stated with the discipline this site applies to every statistic: these are population rates, not personal risk scores — age, place and circumstance dominate individual risk everywhere — and homicide is a narrow (if honest) lens on safety. But as a first-order answer to "is Europe safe compared to what I know," the order of magnitude is real, official on both sides, and rarely printed this plainly.
Source: CDC FastStats, homicide (National Vital Statistics System), read 29 August 2026.
60-second check
Not sure the policy you have meets your destination's written rule? Run it through the policy check now, before you build the rest of the file around it.
Check my policyUsing safety data the way a mover should
Three rules keep this page useful. Distrust composite "safety indexes" — the rankings that blend crowd-sourced perception surveys with unweighted crime categories are the listicle economy, not measurement; where an index is a named third party's work we would attribute it, and we found none worth the attribution. City-level claims need city-level sources, which is why our banked "safest cities" page stays banked until one exists. And weigh the base rate: at European homicide levels, safety differences between our ten countries should decide almost nothing in a relocation — the categories that genuinely differ (housing cost, healthcare access, the visa file) are the ones this site keeps sourced, and the where-to-move tool weighs them.
Country-level questions get their own honest pages: is Portugal safe and is Spain safe carry the same data with local texture.