Now that the world is reopening again, loads of people with pent-up travel aspirations are ready to realize their dreams of visiting Europe. Over the past two years, on-again-off-again border closures and unpredictable changes in travel restrictions have kept vacationers from venturing very far outside of the U.S.
And, although travel conditions are quickly improving, the LGBTQ+ subset will, unfortunately, still be faced with its own particular set of obstacles and extra factors that need to be taken into consideration when it comes to planning their overseas trips.
While attitudes are trending in a positive direction overall, acceptance, tolerance and protections for the LGBTQ+ community are not uniform across the Continent. Even within the European Union (E.U.), there are some countries that are safer and more welcoming to members of the queer community than others.
Luckily, it seems that an increasing number are legislating greater rights, freedoms and protections for LGBTQ+ individuals, according to this year's Rainbow Europe report from the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA). Since 2009, the advocacy organization has indexed and ranked 49 European nations on a scale of zero to 100 on the basis of their legislation and policies toward LGBTQ+ people.
The criteria ILGA Europe factors in to establish each country's final score fall into several categories: equality and non-discrimination; family; hate crime and hate speech; legal gender recognition; intersex bodily integrity; civil society space; and asylum.
Each issue is assigned a different weight in the overall score calculation, but all of them are interconnected and considered equally essential for "the full enjoyment of human rights" by LGBTQ+ people.
For the seventh consecutive year, the archipelagic nation of Malta took first place as 2022's most LGBTQ+-friendly European destination with a score of 92. The archipelagic Mediterranean country continues to set the pace when it comes to legislating equal rights for queer folks at the national level, legalizing same-sex marriage and joint adoption policies, banning conversion therapy, legal recognition of gender identity, anti-discrimination laws, legal protections against hate speech and violence, and more.
The rest of the top ten are Denmark with second place (which jumped up seven spots since last year) and 74 points; Belgium with 72; Norway, Luxembourg and Sweden with roughly 68; France with 64; Montenegro with 63; and Portugal and Spain with 62.
At the other end of the spectrum, Azerbaijan came in dead last with a score of just two points; Turkey managed to rack up four points; Armenia and Russia followed with 8; Belarus with 12; Poland and Monaco with 13; San Marino, Romania and Bulgaria with 18; and Ukraine with 19.
You can download the complete index of all 49 countries analyzed and see how they fared in terms of fulfilling ILGA Europe's comparison criteria here. An easy-to-use comparison tool, which allows you to compare the countries to each other by category is also available here.
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