Diplomacy & Crisis News

Also known as the Normandy Index, the Peace and Security Index ranks 138 countries and the 27 European Union Member States as a whole, based on specific threats to peace in each. Eleven indicators gather data on the security, economic and social situation. The indicators are identified using the EU global strategy and strategic compass, a tool EU policymakers use to assess countries at risk and in need of EU assistance.

In her foreword to the latest edition of the Index, President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, said ‘a clear understanding of the threats to peace, security and democracy around the world is crucial. This makes the Normandy Index a valuable tool for navigating today’s world’.

The results of the 2025 exercise suggest the level of threats to peace in the world is the highest in the seven years since the index began, confirming declining trends in global security resulting from the war in Ukraine, multiple crises, conflicts and geopolitical rivalry, including those linked to economic, digital and energy dimensions. Among the top three most peaceful countries are Switzerland, Iceland and Norway.

The most fragile countries are the Central African Republic, Afghanistan and Somalia. Geopolitical crisis in the European neighbourhood resulted in a fall in the EU‑27’s overall global ranking of 3 places in 2024. In 2025, the EU‑27 ranking remains the same as the previous year (10th globally). After a slight improvement from 2019 to 2022, the global peace profile (5.74 average in 2023‑2024) has also declined in the past year to 5.79 – unsurprisingly given current geopolitical tensions (10 is the highest mark).

According to the Index’s lead author, Branislav Stanicek, the 2025 edition also reflects the changed dynamics of today’s international conflicts, which particularly affect energy security and fiscal policies. He stresses: ‘International actions such as restrictive measures against Russian Federation clearly affected governmental revenue and suggests a tightening of the Russian government’s fiscal stance’. In 2025, Russia fell 16 positions down the Index, to 124th globally. However, increased sovereign debt, measured by economic indicator, also demonstrates a certain vulnerability within EU‑27 and Western democracies. Nevertheless, Professor Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University argues ‘Public debt is just a deferred tax. It will be paid by future taxpayers, either through an explicit tax increase or by inflation’.

Derived from the Index, 63 individual country case studies provide a picture of the state of peace in the world today. An online, interactive version of the Index allows data comparison across countries, regions and timeline. In 2023, the Index won the Forbes Social Communication Award (in the domain of public communication of peace and security).

The Normandy Index differs from other indices in that it adopts an approach tailored by and to EU action. It also defines conflict and the numerous stages between perfect peace and total war as a product of factors linked to the main threats identified by the EU in its external action strategy. The EU global strategy identifies the following 11 threats as the current main challenges to peace and security.  

Trends towards inflation, trade, energy disruption and weaker economies, underway since 2021, continued in 2025. Global GDP growth slowed in 2022 to 3.2 %, more than 1 percentage point less than expected at the end of 2021, mainly weighed down by Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. Following 2.6 % growth in 2023 and sub-trend global growth of 2.8 % in 2024, global growth is projected to reach 3.2 % in 2025 and 3.1 % in 2026. At the same time, Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), issued a stark warning in October 2025 about the mounting risks facing the global economy: ‘buckle up: uncertainty is the new normal’.

Read the complete study on ‘Mapping threats to peace and democracy worldwide: Normandy Index 2025‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

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