Europe & Russia

Within Europe, there are sometimes sizable differences in levels of religious commitment. A new interactive lets you explore these differences.

Central and Eastern Europeans of different ages are about equally likely to say that Christianity, birthplace and ancestry are important to national identity.

At a time of rising tensions between their countries, people in the United States and Germany express increasingly divergent views about the status of their decades-long partnership.

People in Russia, India and Germany stand out for being more likely than those in other countries to say their country is playing a bigger role in world affairs.

In 2016, seven nations – Turkey, Brunei, Ethiopia, France, Hungary, Niger and Tunisia – directly used emergency laws to restrict religion, according to Pew Research Center’s latest annual religious restrictions study. While a number of different religious groups were targeted, these laws imposed restrictions on Muslims more than any other group.

When it comes to public attitudes on religion, national identity and the place of religious minorities, Greeks, like their neighbors to the East, hold more nationalist and less accepting views than do Western Europeans.

Younger adults in eight Western European countries are about twice as likely as older adults to get news online than from TV. They also are more critical of the media's performance and coverage of key issues.

They tend to be more left-leaning, more progressive in their social and political views, more receptive to immigrants and more favorable toward the European Union. They are also more mixed in their views of traditional center-left parties than older Western Europeans.

In the EU, Central and Eastern Europeans differ from Western Europeans in their views on certain issues, including religious minorities and gay marriage.

The European continent today is split in public attitudes toward religion, minorities and social issues such as gay marriage and legal abortion.