Freedom Barometer Europe 2015 Observations

Of the 27 countries observed in 2015 in our Freedom Barometer Europe, we selected 13 from the EU member countries. Therefore it comes as no surprise that we find the Netherlands (1) and Germany (2) on top of our ranking. Interesting is that Estonia (3) is scoring better than Belgium (4). 

                   Ranking of 27 Selected Countries In Comparison

In our region of East and Southeast Europe (ESEE), we have three EU member states: Bulgaria (12), Croatia (11) and Romania (10). All three of them rank higher than Greece (15), the lowest ranking EU country in our list. 

If we have a look at the different components (economic freedom, rule of law and political freedom), we can see that in economic freedom we have little variation (lowest is Serbia with 23.97 and highest is Armenia with 29.69). This differential is much bigger in political freedom (lowest Tajikistan with 5.26 and highest are Belgium and the Netherlands with 28.90) and the rule of law (lowest Russia and Ukraine with 7.02 each and highest the Netherlands with 24.59). In both categories governments have a huge potential for improvements of freedom for their citizens. Lots of reforms need to be brought on their way in 2016. Let us hope we can see improvements at the end of this year.

Find out more about the comparative index of Friedrich Naumann Foundation Regional Office of East and Southeast Europe, which offers you a way to measure freedom from a liberal perspective. The Freedom Barometer is the only index that combines so many aspects of freedom, covering political and economic freedom and the rule of law.The 2015 Europe Edition includes 27 countries. The authors’ team comes from the Project office of FNF Western Balkans. 

The whole report can be downloaded from here.

For more information please visit freedombarometer.org and facebook.com/freedombarometer.

The FreedomGraph infographics presents the comparative index: