While June has pointed out, it announces not only that summer is at our door but, for the LGBTQ+community, it is also the period during which the steps of pride are held around the world. What are the safest European countries?
As every year in June, millions of LGBTQ+ will be entitled to the most crisp phrase as possible of those who are not affected: “Why you need to parade, there is no pride for the heteros“And yet, the figures clearly indicate an increase in homophobia on the old continent, according to the 2025 data of the Ilga-Europe association. This is the case in the East, in Hungary and Romania in particular.
On the sidelines of the pride season – the Parisian march will take place on June 28 – the association has unveiled its ranking of the safest European countries for LGBTQ+ based on several criteria: laws and policies that impact the lives of people queeraction against hatred crimes, equality in the face of marriage and family, recognition of the genre etc. The 2025 ranking has just been published.
On the third step of the podium we find a country renowned for a long time to be Gay friendly : Iceland. The silver medal returns to Belgium, a country which had notably voted in favor of the marriage between people of the same sex with a lot in advance since it already goes back to 2003. But the surest country for LGBTQ+ remains, for the tenth consecutive year, Malta! This small country of only 564,000 inhabitants has shown modernism because sexual orientation, gender identity and sexual characteristics have been protected at the constitutional level since 2014.
The rest of the classification reserves surprises since the United Kingdom loses no less than 6 places and is positioned in 22nd row. The cause? The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom has ruled that the legal genre is based on sex assigned to birth, excluding trans women from the legal framework. As for France, our country also loses places year after year. While we occupied 13th place in 2024, we are now going in 15th place. Conversely, despite its very hard policy towards LGBTQ+, Poland obtains 39th place against the 43rd the year before. A small increase, which gives hope, linked to the end “LGBT-Free Zones”.
