Ranking European Paternalism

July 18, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Being a libertarian is refreshingly simple.

You get to control your own life and you have no desire to dictate how other people live.

Government exists (or should exist) basically to protect life, liberty, and property. Maybe a few additional “public goods” if you’re a soft-core libertarian. Or maybe nothing at all if you’re a hard-core libertarian.

Regardless, you definitely don’t want government to tell people how to live. You may think people shouldn’t smoke, drink, gamble, over-eat, do drugs, or engage in other potentially risky activities, but it’s up to them to make those choices.

Unfortunately, many politicians have decided they should tell people how to behave.

But not all of them. According to the new Nanny State Index, which ranks 29 European countries, German politicians are the most tolerant, followed by Luxembourg and Italy.

Turkey is in last place, with Lithuania and Finland being the next worst.

For what it’s worth, the rankings have not changed much since I wrote about the 2019 version of the Nanny State Index.

Without looking at the data, I would have assumed that Southern Europe would have a more laissez-faire approach than Northern Europe.

But this map shows that there there’s not an ironclad geographical pattern. Though I find it interesting that Denmark is an outlier among Nordic nations.

P.S. The United States is not included in the rankings, so I don’t know how America would compare to European nations. But readers can look at the rankings for personal freedom in Freedom in the 50 States (a publication that looks at many of the same variables) to see which states are tolerant or oppressive. You’ll see that Nevada ranks #1 and Texas ranks #50 (though both are in the top 10 for economic freedom).