Which EU countries reported the largest absolute increases in police‑recorded rape offences between 2022 and 2023 according to Eurostat?

1. What Eurostat did publish and what it means

Eurostat’s aggregate dataset and explanatory report state that rape recorded by police rose by 7% in 2023 compared with 2022 — part of a longer trend where sexual‑violence offences have climbed substantially since 2013 — and the agency explicitly links some of that rise to greater awareness and reporting rather than to a simple rise in offending ^{[1] [2]}. The Eurostat “Crime statistics” publications give the EU total (91,370 rape offences in 2023) and percentage change but, in the extracts provided, do not include the country‑level absolute change figures the question asks for ^{[1] [2]}.

2. Why a country ranking is not present in the supplied reporting

The data browser and category dataset that would contain police‑recorded offences by country and year (Eurostat’s crim_off_cat table) are referenced in the sources, but the actual country-level numbers and the year‑on‑year absolute differences are not present in the excerpts supplied to this brief, so the sourcing here cannot support naming which EU states had the largest absolute increases between 2022 and 2023 ^{[3] [1]}. Eurostat’s metadata also flags a slew of national legislative and classification changes in 2023 (for example Spain’s Organic Law 10/2022 coming into force, revisions in France, amendments in Finland and differences in Malta and Romania) that alter what is counted as “rape” or how cases are recorded, which further complicates direct country‑to‑country year‑on‑year comparisons without consulting the underlying country-level table and the accompanying metadata ^[4].

3. How to answer the question precisely using primary Eurostat tables

A precise, defensible answer requires extracting the raw counts for “rape” from Eurostat’s police‑recorded offences dataset (crim_off_cat or the relevant crim_offence time series) for each EU member state for 2022 and for 2023 and computing the absolute difference; the Eurostat data browser and the published PDF reports identify these series and the release timeline, but the exact country breakdowns were not included in the excerpts provided here ^{[3] [2]}. Because national law changes and coding revisions in 2023 (Spain, France, Finland, etc.) are explicitly noted by Eurostat, any ranking should be presented alongside notes about comparability and coding changes to avoid misleading conclusions ^[4].

4. Context: why headlines about rising rape numbers need careful interpretation

Eurostat itself cautions that increases in police‑recorded sexual‑violence offences are “closely connected to raising awareness in the society and might impact reporting rates,” and the office stresses methodological differences across countries in how offences are recorded and when they are counted (e.g., upon report, upon investigation, or upon conviction), which can make cross‑country absolute changes hard to interpret without deep metadata review ^{[1] [4]}. Independent fact‑checks and commentators similarly warn that comparing raw rates or counts across countries can mislead unless adjusted for population, legal definitions and recording practices ^[5].

5. Practical next steps and transparency about limits

To produce the requested ranked list with confidence, the necessary next step is to download Eurostat’s police‑recorded offences by offence category broken down by country and year (the crim_off_cat/bookmark dataset) and compute the 2023 minus 2022 absolute differences, then annotate each country’s figure with any relevant national law or classification change flagged in Eurostat metadata — a process the current supplied reporting points to but does not itself complete ^{[3] [4]}. The sources available allow a reliable EU‑wide statement (7% increase in rape and 91,370 police‑recorded rapes in 2023) but not the country‑by‑country absolute increase ranking requested ^{[1] [2]}.