Europe

The Europe dataset on PlainEmploy covers 43 countries, with 31 present in the ILO EPLex termination-protection index, 29 in the World Bank B-READY 2025 labor regulation scorecard, and 35 in the OECD Employment Protection Legislation database. 27 of these are OECD members, giving them deep historical EPL time series. 27 are EU members, subject to shared directives on dismissal, fixed-term contracts, and collective redundancies. Data runs through 2025, with indicators published on different cycles — EPLex updated periodically, B-READY released in 2025, and OECD EPL maintained as a multi-year panel.

Across countries with EPLex data in Europe, the average composite protection score is 0.468/1.0, with Czech Republic at the top (0.643) and Finland at the bottom (0.309). B-READY 2025 labor scores average 69.2/100, led by Malta at 79.0. The OECD EPL overall index averages 2.37/6.0 for reporting countries in this region, with Russia showing the highest strictness (3.06).

The table below ranks Europe countries by the best available protection score, normalized into a common direction where higher values indicate stronger statutory protection for workers. EPLex-labelled rows draw from ILO statutory indicators covering notice, severance, and redress. B-READY-labelled rows blend regulation quality with enforcement and service delivery. OECD-labelled rows aggregate strictness on individual and collective dismissal. Clicking any country opens its full profile, where tenure-based notice periods, severance schedules, dispute-resolution timelines, and historical trends are broken out with explicit source citations. Use the region view for scanning; use country profiles for operational detail.

Regional averages are a helpful starting point, but they hide a lot of variation between the countries inside a region. Two neighbors that share a border and a legal tradition can still take very different approaches to notice periods, severance pay, and the rules around collective dismissal. Treat the regional figures here as a way to see broad patterns, such as whether a region tends toward stronger or more flexible employment protection, and then drill into the individual country pages to understand the specific rules that apply. Coverage matters as well, because a region is only represented by the countries that report to the ILO, the World Bank, and the OECD, so a region with few reporting countries will show a less complete picture than one where most economies publish data. Reform cycles further complicate the comparison, since laws change at different speeds across a region and the most recent available year is not always the same for every country. Read each number alongside its source and year label, and use the regional view to frame questions rather than to settle them.