For most it is clear: Europe is the continent in which we live. But there are also countries that belong to the continent and are often forgotten.

What is Europe anyway?

First of all, from a purely geographical point of view, Europe is a continent, more precisely a subcontinent, that is, the western part of the so-called Eurasian plate. After Australia and Oceania, Europe is the smallest continent in the world. It has a territorial extension of 10,532,000 km² and a coastline of around 117,000 km. Between the northernmost point, Nordkinn in Norway, and the southernmost point, Tarifa in Spain, there are 3,800 kilometers between 36 and 71 degrees north latitude. Europe’s land mass stretches from east to west from the Russian Ural Mountains to the Atlantic coast of Portugal, which means about 6,000 kilometers from west to east. Europe is commonly divided into Western Europe, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, and Southeast Europe.

What countries belong to Europe?

The number of countries belonging to Europe differs from the EU members or other European confederations. For example, Cyprus is (partly) a member of the EU, but geographically it is 100% in Asia. This list is about the countries that are geographically located on the European continent. But it also includes administered offshore areas on the European subcontinent. All in all, this leads to a list of 47 independent states:

• Albanian
• Andorra
• belarus
• Belgium
• Bosnia Herzegovina
• Bulgaria
• Denmark
• Germany
• Estonia
• Finland
• France
• Greece
• Great Britain and Northern Ireland
• Ireland
• Iceland
• Italy
• kazakhstan
• Kosovo
• Croatia
• latvia
• liechtenstein
• Lithuania
• luxembourg
• malt
• moldova
• Monaco
• montenegro
• Netherlands
• north macedonia
• Norway
• Austria
• Poland
• Portugal
• Romania
• Russia
• San Marino
• Sweden
• Swiss
• Serbian
• Slovakia
• Slovenia
• Spain
• Czech Republic
• Türkiye
• Ukraine
• Hungary
• vatican state

European countries: Are there also special cases?

In the long list of states in Europe there are, of course, geographical and geopolitical peculiarities. For example, Turkey, Russia, and Kazakhstan are located on both the European and Asian continents. Some countries have offshore areas: Spain, Portugal, and France, for example, have parts of the country outside of Europe. For Spain, these are in and out of Africa, while France includes areas in South America and on oceanic, African, North American, and Antarctic islands. The Azores and Madeira archipelagos belong to Portugal and are therefore also counted as part of Europe, although geographically they are part of Africa.