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New figures from the EU Statistical Office show in which countries the majority of people die violently. Switzerland is at the bottom of the list.
In March 2017, there was a shooting at Café 56 in Basel with two deaths. The majority of fatal violent crimes occur in the Baltic states and French overseas territories.
Photo: Keystone
The murder rate in Europe has been falling steadily since 2011. The fact that the propensity to use violence is higher in the Balkans turns out to be statistically a bias: it is the Baltics who kill most frequently, especially Latvians . Switzerland ranks third from last.
The average homicide rate in the EU, according to the European Statistical Office (Eurostat) for 2017, is 0.7 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. More than five times the probability of ending in homicide in Latvia is 3.75. Lithuania has the second highest homicide rate at 2.82 and Estonia the third highest at 2.28. After that nothing follows for a long time and then Turkey with 1.7.
Luxembourg has the lowest rate in Europe at 0.15. The second rarest is homicide in Ireland (0.36) and the third rarest in Switzerland (0.38). The “notorious” Balkan countries are in the top third, just behind the Baltic countries, Turkey and Malta. Romania has the highest rate in the Balkans with 1.47, Hungary the lowest with 0.83.
Much more men murdered than women
In absolute numbers, Turkey leads with 1,365 people deliberately murdered, followed by Germany with 367. The gender difference in Turkey is striking: 81 percent of those killed there are men. In the EU, 65 per cent of the victims are men.
There is a sad equality in Switzerland: 17 men and 16 women were deliberately murdered in 2017. In that year, Austria was the only country in Europe in which women were more likely to die violently than men: out of 48 murder victims , 27 were women. In most other countries, at least twice as many men died as women.
The peripheral areas of the EU are the most dangerous
The regions with the highest homicide rates were the French overseas archipelago of Mayotte, located between Mozambique and Madagascar, with the highest absolute homicide rate of 5.3. It is followed by French Guiana with 4.3 and Portuguese Madeira with 3.4 fatal violent crimes per 100,000 inhabitants.
