Sources and methodology

How Relocate in Europe finds, checks and dates what it publishes – and what it does not do.

Where the information comes from

Every rule, fee, deadline and figure comes from a primary source: the national governments and their agencies for migration, tax, social security and population registration; EU institutions; embassies and consulates; municipalities; official statistics offices and central banks; universities; and transport authorities. Each guide names its sources under the section where they are used.

Each guide ends with a list of the official pages it is based on, with the date we read them. We link only to official sources – governments, their agencies, EU institutions and official statistics – and the links open the authority’s own website.

We do not rely on relocation agencies, forums or other guides for facts. Where an official source is unclear, out of date or contradicts another, the guide says so rather than choosing silently.

How rules are checked

Every Monday morning, the rules in each guide – fees, thresholds, deadlines, forms and who qualifies – are checked against the official pages they are based on. When a rule has changed, the guide is updated and the change is dated. Every page shows when it was last updated, and rules that change on a known date say from when they apply.

We distinguish between the law, official guidance and practical advice, and say which is which.

Figures and fact sheets

Each country's fact sheet shows the latest official data, fetched from the statistics offices' own data services. Every figure carries its source and the period it covers, and each fact sheet shows when the figures were fetched, in Stockholm time. Most statistics are published monthly, quarterly or yearly, so we call them the latest official data – not live figures.

Source	What we use it for
Eurostat	Population, GDP, growth, unemployment, employment, inflation (HICP), income, price levels, people born abroad, intentional homicide
World Bank	GDP per person and full-year growth, for comparison across all countries
European Central Bank	Euro reference exchange rates and the deposit facility rate
Statistics Sweden (SCB)	Population, labour force survey, CPIF, salaries
Statistics Norway (SSB)	Population, labour force survey, CPI, earnings
Statistics Denmark	Population, registered unemployment, CPI, earnings
Office for National Statistics (ONS)	UK GDP, labour market and consumer prices
Central banks	Sveriges Riksbank, Norges Bank, Danmarks Nationalbank, Bank of England and the Swiss National Bank: policy rates

Where a country measures something differently – registered rather than survey-based unemployment, for example – the fact sheet says so. Amounts in other currencies are converted to euros at the European Central Bank's reference rate on the day the figures were fetched.

The tools

The take-home pay estimator applies each country's published 2026 rules to one stated standard case. For each country it says what is included, what is not, and how it was checked – against the authority's own calculator or tax tables wherever one exists. The Schengen calculator counts days exactly as Article 6 of the Schengen Borders Code describes. The tools run in your browser; what you type is not sent to us.

Cities and crime figures

The city pages cover every city with more than 100,000 residents in the thirteen larger countries – 411 in all – plus Antibes Juan-les-Pins, Galway and the whole of Monaco, identified from each statistics office’s own municipal population tables. Each city has its latest official population, a two-sentence profile based on the city’s own website, its universities and airports and official statistics, and the crime rate recorded by the police.

The crime rate is the measure each country publishes for its cities – offences recorded by the police per 1,000 residents – set against the rate for the whole country, or in the UK for England and Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland. France publishes no total by commune, so we show victims of physical violence and three other published indicators. Where a country publishes only counts, we calculate the rate from the official count and the official population and say so; where no figure is published for a city, we say that too.

Countries define and record crime differently, so city rates should be compared only within one country, and offences are counted where they happen, which raises the rates of city centres with many commuters and visitors. No official body ranks countries by overall crime; for a comparison between countries we use intentional homicide per 100,000 residents from Eurostat (England and Wales: ONS), the one measure that is recorded in much the same way everywhere.

Dates and times

Dates are written in full, such as 24 September 2026, and times are Paris time (Central European Time). “Last updated” is the date a page's content last changed.

Independence

Relocate in Europe is independent. Editorial content is not paid for. If partners or commercial services appear on the site, they will always be labelled as such and kept separate from the editorial information, and a partnership will never mean that we recommend or have verified a service. No authority or organisation mentioned in a guide has endorsed Relocate in Europe unless a page says so explicitly.

Corrections and contact

Found an error, or a rule that has changed? Write to editor@relocateineurope.com and name the page. We check it against the official source, correct the guide and date the change. Questions about partner pages go to partner@relocateineurope.com.

What we are not

Relocate in Europe gives general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. For a decision about your own case, contact the authority named in the guide or a qualified adviser.

Photography

Photos are licensed from Adobe Stock and credited on each image.