What is this?

This is a database of physical, non-edible, non-perishable products manufactured in Europe, i.e. we care where the plant/factory that made each particular product is located.

For the purpose of transparency (to understand where your money end up), we also try adding to each product card a country where the headquarters of a company that makes/sells a product is located, but that's a work in progress.

The database is always incomplete — help us by adding a European product that you like!

What is this database for?

  • Anything, that one can touch and is not perishable.
  • Cosmetics/perfume - it's perishable, but allowed to be added.
  • And of course all the abovementioned must be made on a factory/plant/workshop located in Europe.

What is this database NOT for?

  • Food/drinks.
  • Medicines/drugs.
  • Chemicals, cleaning products.
  • Fuel/gasoline.
  • Anything produced on a site located out of Europe.

Why? Because, when sold in Europe, these type of consumables usually produced locally, so there's little sense to fill the database with those — we'll have a lot of entries that don't really help anyone.

How are you different from goeuropean.org, eualternative.eu, builtineu.eu, european-alternatives.eu etc.?

  • We collect information about physical products only (i.e. no digital services).
  • We focus on products that are physically manufactured on European soil, not on where the HQ of a company that makes/sells a particular product is located. I.e. you can enter information about products manufactured in Europe for a company located in Australia.
  • We do not focus on "alternatives" — we believe European products are self-sufficient.
  • The database is fully open and available for everyone to contribute. Both the website and the database are licensed under free licenses.
  • This service is a non-commercial initiative, not linked to any company/organization etc.
  • The website is a purely front-end application — you can easily save it for offline use.

What does "manufactured in Europe" mean exactly?

The plant or factory or workshop that physically combined/constructed a product out of parts/components is located within the geographical borders of Europe (see a definition of Europe below).

How do you verify manufacturers' claims?

That's the neat part — we don't! We believe whatever a manufacturer states on their website or the product itself to be true. But there's a catch: not every mention of Europe or European countries means that a product was indeed manufactured there.

For example, the following statements DO NOT mean that a product was produced in Europe:

  • Designed in <Country>
  • <Country> quality/tradition/engineering
  • We are a small team based in <Country>

Look for concrete statements that convey information about where the product is being physically manufactured:

  • Made in <Country>
  • Produced in <Country>
  • Manufactured in <Country>
  • Handcrafted in <Country>

Does "made in Europe" guarantee a high quality of a product?

Simply put, no — there are no such guarantees — that statement doesn't tell us anything about the product's quality. But on general European products often (but not always!) have a higher quality than similar goods manufactured elsewhere.

What do you consider to be "Europe"?

  • EU countries (not states — see special cases below)
    • You know these
  • EEA countries
    • Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway
  • Schengen area countries
    • Switzerland
  • Countries fully located on the European continent, according to Wikipedia
    • Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus (¯\_(ツ)_/¯), Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, North Macedonia, San Marino, Serbia, Vatican, UK, Ukraine
  • Special cases:
    • All territories, departments, dependencies, collectivities, and jurisdictions of a country are considered as part of that country.
    • Cyprus and Ukraine: these countries are partially occupied by foreign states, that are not part of any of the categories above. Therefore, goods manufactured on the occupied territories cannot be added into the database, sorry.
    • Kingdom of the Netherlands
      • Caribbean Netherlands are part of the country the Netherlands and, therefore, are in.
      • Other three countries are, well, separate countries in the Kingdom, and therefore are out.
    • Kosovo: while we do recognize Kosovo, ISO 3166-1 so far doesn't. Therefore it is currently impossible to enter goods produced there into the database, sorry.
    • UK: Akrotiri and Dhekelia — enter these as Cyprus.

Feel free to raise an issue if you have suggestions on how to improve this categorization.

How do tags work here?

A tag is a string of category names, in a hierarchical order, from the most general to a more specific, separated by colons. For example: "electronics:computer:laptop", "clothes:shoes:dress:oxford".

Be as precise as you like. Use singular nouns where it makes sense.

One product card can have multiple (perhaps unlimited — I haven't tested) tags attached to it.

The website splits these tags by colons and uses them to construct the category menu.

GenAI transparency statement

The code of this website was crafted with a help of non-European generative AI technologies: Microsoft Copilot, Anthropic Claude, and Anysphere Cursor (Mistral Vibe is, unfortunately, a paid service, therefore I didn't use it).

The website texts and database entries have been written purely by humans.

Why GitHub? It's not European.

The website repository is located on Codeberg. The main copy of the product repository is also hosted there.

But to simplify collaboration, a copy of the product repository is also published to GitHub — simply more people have GitHub accounts these days.

You are very welcome to create issues and send merge requests through both platforms.