Europe's emergency kit lists in charts: 24 countries, 53 items

On 30 October 2026 the European Commission set out what every household should be able to cover for at least 72 hours: water, food, heat, light, medicines, hygiene and a way to get information. It left the packing list to national governments. We read the official household guides of 24 countries, 23 EU members and the United Kingdom, and mapped every item they name onto one 53-item checklist. These charts show the result.

24official national guides compared

3–14days of supplies asked, from the EU minimum to Austria

12–39items listed, from Cyprus to Czechia

6items on every single list

Fig. 1 · Europe at a glance

The darker the block, the longer a country asks you to last. The taller, the more items its guide lists.

Hover or tap a block for the guide's name. Grey: Italy, Spain, Hungary and Malta publish no national household list (why).

Two maps of Europe that don't line up

Duration and thoroughness are separate choices. Twenty of the 24 guides stop at the EU's 72 hours. Sweden and Estonia ask for a week, Germany for ten days and Austria for two weeks, nearly five times the EU minimum. But the longest guides are not the longest lists. Czechia and Poland plan for 72 hours yet name the most items, 39 and 38. Estonia plans for a week with 18.

Fig. 2 · Thoroughness

How many of the 53 checklist items each national guide names

Bars are coloured by how long the guide plans for. The dashed line is the median guide.

The shortest lists are not careless, they are focused. Cyprus's guide is a single grab-bag graphic, and Portugal's is written for earthquakes. Both cover water, light, radio, medicine and first aid, but leave out most of the comfort and hygiene items the longer guides add.

Every item, every country

This is the full dataset in one picture: a row for each item, a column for each country, ordered from the longest list on the left to the shortest on the right. The solid band near the top of each category shows where guides agree. The scattered squares lower down show where each country has its own priorities.

Fig. 3 · The full matrix

53 items × 24 countries: a filled square means the guide lists it

Grouped by category, most-listed first. The number on the right counts the guides that list each item. On a phone, scroll the grid sideways.

Six items everyone agrees on

Only six items appear in all 24 guides: drinking water, a torch, a battery or wind-up radio, your regular medication, a first-aid kit and cash. Below that the agreement falls away fast. 28 of the 53 items appear in fewer than half the guides. The full breakdown is in what the lists agree on.

Fig. 4 · Consensus

Each dot is one item, placed by how many of the 24 guides list it

Our checklist counts an item as essential when at least a quarter of the guides list it for everyone.

Use the data

The charts on this page are drawn live from the same dataset as our checklist, so they always match it. You can download it below. Each row links back to an official publication listed on the checklist page.

Download

The dataset behind these charts

CSV, UTF-8. Free to reuse with a credit and link to emergency72.eu. Compiled by Seventy-Two from 24 official national guides, November 2026.

How we built it

For each country we used the household preparedness guide published by its national civil-protection authority, listed with links in the sources table on the checklist page. Items that different guides describe in different words, such as "torch", "flashlight" and "lamp", were merged into one checklist item. An item counts as listed only if the guide names it, not if it merely implies it. Durations are the figure each guide states for household supplies. Austria's Zivilschutzverband asks for at least two weeks.