The thermometer
How tense is each European country compared with its usual self. Built every morning from the top stories of 39 countries and the tone of their press; click a country to see what is driving it.
Updated · 24 October 2026 · How it works
Tension is highest in France (2.14), where Darmanin reported 217 people jailed out of 2,700 detained after the weekend's violence and looting, and 70,000 police and gendarmes are mobilised for a nationwide day of protests on 24 October. Albania (1.91) follows, with a ninth night of unrest in Tirana involving petrol bombs and tear gas as protesters demand that Prime Minister Edi Rama resign. In Ukraine (1.66), tension centres on security, with Russia attacking Kyiv on day 1,671 of the war and drone attacks hitting Russia.
Our tension index needs ten days of history before it can compare a country with its usual level. Until then the map compares each country with the European average of the day.
France
- Our news index
- building baseline · 4/10 days
- Tension
- 2.14 · 53 stories in 3 days, 47 with tension
Daily temperature · France
| Day | France |
|---|---|
| 24 Oct 2026 | 2.14 |
| 23 Oct 2026 | 2.09 |
| 22 Oct 2026 | 2.26 |
| 21 Oct 2026 | 2.71 |
| 20 Oct 2026 | 2.98 |
| 19 Oct 2026 | 3.22 |
| 18 Oct 2026 | 3.15 |
What is driving it
- Unrest
Darmanin reports 217 people jailed out of 2,700 detained after the weekend's violence and looting in France.
- Unrest
France mobilises 70,000 police officers as online calls for looting and riots circulate ahead of expected protests.
- Protests and strikes
France mobilises 70,000 police and gendarmes for a new nationwide day of protests on 24 October.
Country by country
| # | Country | Tension | vs 3 days ago | Main driver | Last weeks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | France | 2.14 | ↓ −0.6 | Unrest | |
| 2 | Albania | 1.91 | ↓ −0.8 | Unrest | |
| 3 | Ukraine | 1.66 | ↓ −0.5 | Security | |
| 4 | Sweden | 1.34 | ↑ +0.2 | Disasters | |
| 5 | Serbia | 1.34 | ↑ +0.1 | Government crisis | |
| 6 | Italy | 1.19 | ↓ −1.0 | Protests and strikes | |
| 7 | Poland | 1.13 | ↑ +0.3 | Government crisis | |
| 8 | Germany | 1.02 | ↓ −0.1 | Government crisis | |
| 9 | Belgium | 0.92 | ↓ −0.2 | Government crisis | |
| 10 | Netherlands | 0.86 | ↓ −0.1 | Disasters | |
| 11 | United Kingdom | 0.83 | ↓ −0.2 | Disasters | |
| 12 | Slovenia | 0.83 | ↑ +0.3 | Government crisis | |
| 13 | Austria | 0.82 | ↓ −0.5 | Protests and strikes | |
| 14 | Spain | 0.81 | ↓ −0.1 | Government crisis | |
| 15 | Lithuania | 0.8 | ↓ −0.3 | Disasters | |
| 16 | Portugal | 0.79 | ↓ −0.2 | Protests and strikes | |
| 17 | Romania | 0.75 | ↓ −0.5 | Security | |
| 18 | Norway | 0.72 | ↑ +0.1 | Disasters | |
| 19 | Slovakia | 0.71 | ↑ +0.1 | Government crisis | |
| 20 | Greece | 0.69 | ↓ −1.1 | Disasters | |
| 21 | Czechia | 0.67 | ↓ −0.1 | Government crisis | |
| 22 | Estonia | 0.66 | ↑ +0.3 | Security | |
| 23 | Ireland | 0.57 | ↓ −0.3 | Security | |
| 24 | Moldova | 0.56 | ↑ +0.2 | Security | |
| 25 | Bulgaria | 0.53 | ↓ −0.4 | Government crisis | |
| 26 | Croatia | 0.51 | ↑ +0.3 | Economic strain | |
| 27 | Malta | 0.5 | ↑ +0.3 | Economic strain | |
| 28 | Kosovo | 0.42 | ↑ +0.1 | Government crisis | |
| 29 | Switzerland | 0.41 | ↓ −0.6 | Security | |
| 30 | Bosnia & Herzegovina | 0.38 | ↓ −0.3 | Economic strain | |
| 31 | Hungary | 0.35 | ↓ −0.3 | Security | |
| 32 | Latvia | 0.33 | ↓ −0.3 | Protests and strikes | |
| 33 | Luxembourg | 0.23 | → +0.0 | Security | |
| 34 | Denmark | 0.17 | ↓ −0.1 | Security | |
| 35 | Finland | 0.13 | ↓ −0.3 | Protests and strikes | |
| 36 | Cyprus | 0.12 | ↓ −0.2 | — | |
| 37 | Montenegro | 0.03 | → +0.0 | — | |
| 38 | Iceland | 0 | ↓ −0.2 | — | |
| 39 | North Macedonia | 0 | → +0.0 | — |
How the temperature is measured
- Every morning the agent reads the top stories of 39 European countries (the same feed as the map). Each story gets a tone from −2 to +2, a kind of tension (protests and strikes, unrest, government crisis, security, economic strain, disasters, or none) and an intensity from 0 to 3.
- A country's daily tension level is the average across its stories of that intensity, plus half of any negative tone, smoothed over three days.
- The temperature compares that level with the country's own past: how many standard deviations it sits above or below its last 30 days. A second reading will do the same with the tone of the country's whole press over 90 days, from the GDELT Project; it is not available yet, because GDELT rarely answers our server. The temperature is the mean of the readings that are available.
- So +2 in Portugal and +2 in France both mean "much hotter than usual for that country", not that the two are equally tense. A country with few stories moves more from day to day; the number of stories is shown next to it.
- Scores are written by an AI from headlines, with a fixed rubric. They are an indicator, not a measurement: read the stories behind each number.
GDELT: gdeltproject.org