Almost 4,000 homicides were recorded in the European Union in a year. This is worrying, although the figures show a slight downward trend. The data, referring to the end of 2023, comes from a report released by Eurostat today. “In 2023, there were 3,930 intentional homicides in the EU”. This represents “an increase of 1.5% compared with 2022. However, there has been a slightly downward trend in the past decade and the number fell by 15.2% compared with 2013 (4,635)”. According to the Commission’s statistical office based in Luxembourg, “among the EU countries, the highest absolute numbers of intentional homicides were recorded in France (887), followed by Germany (661) and Italy (338), while the lowest numbers were found in Malta (2), Luxembourg (4) and Cyprus (10)”. An increase from 2022 to 2023 was observed in 11 out of the 27 EU countries. France reported the highest increase in absolute numbers with 66 more intentional homicides, ahead of Germany (47 more) and Poland (36 more). The biggest fall occurred in Romania (38 fewer), Belgium (23 fewer) and Finland (19 fewer).