ILGA-Europe – the European Region of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association

Country Ranking

The Country Ranking section is where you can see the bigger picture – quite literally.

This is the latest ILGA-Europe rating of 49 European countries.

So, what can the Country Ranking section show me?

  • Select “All countries” and “All categories” from the drop-down menus at the same time to see the overall Rainbow Europe ranking based on all the criteria in our six categories.
  • You can use the first drop-down menu to compare the 27 current European Union member states to each other.
  • If you’d like to investigate which countries are leading the way in a particular area of law and policy, just use the second drop-down box to pick the area you are interested in. So if you were wondering which countries are setting good standards on legal gender recognition for example, just click on that category in the drop-down list. The results might surprise you!

The colour assigned to each country gives you an indication of where the countries are positioned on a scale between 0% (gross violations of human rights, discrimination) and 100% (respect of human rights, full equality).

Just a note - this colour doesn’t change when you are arranging countries by individual categories. So, don’t be alarmed if the colours vary greatly among countries when you group them together in this way!

gross violations of human
rights, discrimination
respect of human
rights, full equality
*under UNSCR 1244/99

How does ILGA-Europe decide on these rankings? The rankings are based on how the laws and policies of each country impact on the lives of LGBTI people. The ranking records a country’s legal standards for comparison with its European neighbours but the numbers only provide one part of the story. Our Annual Review gives a more nuanced, detailed overview of every country’s progress over the last twelve months and has a chapter dedicated to each country as well as developments at international level.

What categories do we use? ILGA-Europe track each country using a wide range of indicators; covering everything from equality, family issues and hate speech to legal gender recognition, freedom of expression and asylum rights. These benchmarking measures were first used by ILGA-Europe in 2009 and have been expanded on ever since. You can find out more about the individual criteria that ILGA-Europe use to create each Rainbow Europe Map in the Rainbow Module About Section.