Europe is a hotbed of crime, with even the most affluent destinations rocked by serious offences, shock statistics show.
The takeaway from the analysis from Facts4EU, shared exclusively with GB News, is that holidaymakers should decide which crime they most want to avoid and book their holiday in the location with the lowest incidence recorded.
The only downside is that they may find their safest resort for their least-favourite crime is the hotspot falling victim to your second-least favourite.
To ascertain where crime is most rife, Facts4EU looked at crime rates per 100,000 of population, as well as crunching some overall numbers.
Here is what the official figures show, but please note that they come with key caveats, which we'll explain later on.
Major crimes by numbers of police-recorded offences in 2023
Facts4EU
EU countries ranking in the top five
EU countries ranking in the top five for all recorded types of crime
Facts4EU
Five surprising crime-ridden EU hotspots where rape and murder is rampant
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When Scandinavian countries such as Sweden changed their rape laws, the number of rape allegations soared
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The list of types of crime above was complicated by those which do not appear to have a reasonably common definition attached.
For example, when Scandinavian countries such as Sweden changed their rape laws, so that a couple almost require an explicit “I now consent in advance to have sex with you” condition, the number of rape allegations rose many-fold in a single year.
Countries which retained a more traditional version of what constitutes rape therefore appear to be much less threatening to women than might be the case.
Facts4EU looked in vain in the EU’s lists for a ‘non-crime’, as in ‘non-crime hate incident’. In this, it appears that the police in the EU are ahead of PC Plod in the UK, as they seem to feel that if something is a non-crime then it isn’t a crime – and they can go back to drinking their espressos.
The closest the think tank can come to is in France, where we know of certain restaurants in the 16th arrondissement of Paris where ordering the wrong wine with your main course could constitute a ‘non-crime taste incident’ and necessitate the Maitre D’ calling the local Gendarmerie to have you given a formal warning before being escorted off the premises.
