Ranking Freedom

The Trumpists say Europe has fallen into tyranny. What do the numbers say?

Dec 28, 2025

Several weeks ago, the Trump administration turned its mostly passive-aggressive hostility toward the European Union up several notches. That this occurred shortly after the EU levied a large fine against Elon Musk’s X for violating EU regulations is probably not a coincidence.

The theme of the American attacks on Europe is clear and consistent: Europe is becoming a tyranny where civil liberties are curtailed and free speech, in particular, is no longer protected. And administration officials very explicitly link this theme to the fine levied on X. That fine is an attack on free speech for European, the administration says — but because X is international, it is also an attack on the free speech of Americans. And the Trump administration won’t stand for it.

As raw material for the noisy podcasters, pundits, influencers, and politicians of the MAGA-verse, it was fantastic. Go on X today and you’ll see hordes of MAGAnauts excoriating the evil Europeans. The Russian intelligence officers who monitor social media must be pinching themselves.

I want to make three simple points. And then charts. Lots of charts. Everyone loves a good chart, so stick around.

#1/ The small lie

First, it is simply a lie to equate the fine on X to “censorship.” Here is the EU’s explanation for the fine. It has nothing to do with speech. It is about regulations that promote transparency and protect consumers from fraud. That’s it. X is a consumer product. It’s perfectly reasonable that it be subjected to consumer safety legislation the same as any other product.

#2/ The caveat

Second, and separately, there is a genuine and real concern about free speech in many European countries. But before I get into that, please note: That sentence is almost always true everywhere. How to apply free speech is always contested. The lines always shift, to one degree or another. There are always concerns. Take a look at the United States today, where the administration got a talk show host fired for saying something it didn’t like. Concerning. And the president has a nasty habit of suing any news organization that displeases him, or making more sinister and unspecified threats. Also concerning. The president also threatened to charge legislators with treason — and even execute them — simply for having stated a plain fact which the president does not want stated; at Trump’s direction, the military is investigating the use of military law to nail one of them. This list is not remotely exhaustive. So, yeah, plenty of concerns.

But back to Europe: Yes, there are legitimate reasons for concern in Europe. In particular, European countries and officials have been regulating speech more tightly in recent years, especially on the Internet. I think some of their actions have at least been arguably defensible, notably the punishment of calls for violence while mobs roam streets. But some have been asinine. Or worse. No, the guy who trained his pug to deliver a Nazi salute shouldn’t have been fined. No, German citizens shouldn’t be punished for grade-school insults directed at politicians. There’s lots more like that. It is unspeakably dumb. In fact, thoughtlessness — not goose-stepping ideology — is the hallmark of these stories. Over and over, the worst cases can be traced to officials who mindlessly and mechanically applied the law in literal fashion. Europe’s leaders need to understand that this does nothing to stop hate. It does not elevate public discourse. It only makes the law and the state look ridiculous and weak — which is a boon to far-right parties.

And don’t forget “reactance,” as psychologists call the perfectly normal tendency of people to push back when pushed. I beg my European friends to understand this: If you want ordinary people to listen to right-wing lunatics, to feel sympathy for them, to post and repost in their favour, an excellent way to accomplish your goal is to order people not to.

We are not going to ban, forbid, and punish our way out of the slide into far-right illiberalism. Trying to will simply hand the far-right the golden opportunity to pose as the defenders of “freedom” even as they trample civil liberties and the rule of law into the dust. (If you’d like more bloviating about free speech from me, have a look at this essay about the history of censorship in the United States.)

#3/ The big lie

Which brings me to the central point: The Trump administration is lying.

Shocking, I know. But the Trump administration’s portrayal of the EU as freedom’s wasteland is a fraud. A crock. Nonsense.

Here come the charts.

First up is Freedom House: Way back in 1941, before the United States had entered the war, Eleanor Roosevelt (wife of Franklin) and Wendell Wilkie (the Republican presidential candidate who lost in 1940), came together to found Freedom House. The purpose of the new organization was to be a bipartisan voice for liberal democracy in Washington and around the world. And it has been ever since.

Starting in the 1970s, Freedom House created a system for scoring freedom in countries around the world. Their methodology has evolved with time but it’s widely seen as one of the best.

So what does Freedom House have to say about Europe and the United States? Freedom House uses a simple three-tier ranking system: Free, Partially Free, and Not Free. As of the report released February, 2025, Europe and the United States both fall in the “Free” category. (A whole lot of people will be keen to see the next release in February.)

But Freedom House also has numeric rankings which get more fine-grained.

Here are a few listings.

Got that?

According to Freedom House, the United States scores roughly the same or lower than the major European countries. And — cough — substantially below Canada.

But now let’s say you want to go broader than political rights and civil liberties because freedom should include economic liberty.

Happily, we have the Cato Institute.

It’s another Washington think-tank but Cato is big on free markets and laissez-faire government, so its annual ranking of countries by freedom (which it does in conjunction with the Fraser Institute, a similarly inclined organization in Canada) should satisfy the more right-leaning among you.

Here is how Cato ranks the top 42 in the world:

I don’t see a lot of evidence for “EUROPEAN TYRANNY!!!” in that chart. Do you?

But maybe Cato is secretly a leftist cabal.

You know which Washington think-tank is definitely not a leftist cabal? The Heritage Foundation. Yes, the people behind Project 2025.

They have an “Index of Economic Freedom.”

Here it is:

Lots of European countries in the top 15. But no United States.

So where does the US land? Number 27. Five spots behind Germany.

And remember, that’s not some radical leftist outfit saying that. It’s the Heritage Foundation, which has been among the most shameless in bashing the EU.

Now, one last chart.

This one is narrower than the others, but still certainly important for freedom: Reporters Without Borders produces an annual report about freedom of the press in countries around the world.

Here are the 25 countries with the freest presses: