List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Europe

The list below includes all entities falling even partially under any of the various common definitions of Europe, geographical or political. Fifty six sovereign states, six of which have limited recognition, are listed with territory in Europe and/or membership in international European organisations. There are eight areas that are not integral parts of a European state or have special political status.

Definition of Europe as a continent

Under the commonly used geographic definition, the border between Asia and Europe stretches along the Ural Mountains,Ural River, and Caspian Sea in the east, the Greater Caucasus range and the Black Sea, with its outlets, the Bosporus and Dardanelles, in the south. Based on that division, transcontinental states Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkey have territory both in Europe and Asia.

The island of Cyprus in West Asia is proximate to Anatolia (or Asia Minor) and is on the Anatolian Plate but is often considered part of Europe as a current member of the European Union (EU). Armenia is entirely in West Asia also but is a member of certain European organisations. Sometimes Israel is considered as part of geopolitical Europe as well.

Country

A country is a region that is identified as a distinct entity in political geography. A country may be an independent sovereign state or one that is occupied by another state, as a non-sovereign or formerly sovereign political division, or a geographic region associated with sets of previously independent or differently associated people with distinct political characteristics. Regardless of the physical geography, in the modern internationally accepted legal definition as defined by the League of Nations in 1937 and reaffirmed by the United Nations in 1945, a resident of a country is subject to the independent exercise of legal jurisdiction.

Sometimes the word countries is used to refer both to sovereign states and to other political entities, while other times it refers only to states. For example, the CIA World Factbook uses the word in its "Country name" field to refer to "a wide variety of dependencies, areas of special sovereignty, uninhabited islands, and other entities in addition to the traditional countries or independent states".^{[Note 1]}

Europe

Europe (ⁱ/ˈjʊərəp/ or /ˈjɜːrəp/) is a continent that comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. To the east and southeast, Europe is generally considered as separated from Asia by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways of the Turkish Straits. Yet the borders of Europe—a concept dating back to classical antiquity—are arbitrary, as the primarily physiographic term "continent" also incorporates cultural and political elements.

Europe is the world's second-smallest continent by surface area, covering about 10,180,000 square kilometres (3,930,000 sq mi) or 2% of the Earth's surface and about 6.8% of its land area. Of Europe's approximately 50 countries, Russia is by far the largest by both area and population, taking up 40% of the continent (although the country has territory in both Europe and Asia), while Vatican City is the smallest. Europe is the third-most populous continent after Asia and Africa, with a population of 739–743 million or about 11% of the world's population. Europe has a climate heavily affected by warm Atlantic currents, tempering winters and enabling warm summers on most of the continent, even on latitudes that have severe climates in North America and Asia. Further from the Atlantic, seasonal differences increase, but the mildness of the climate remains.