Ben
Ben is a lifelong Nintendo fan who likes to build websites, and make video games. He buys way too much Lego.
European 2 Letter Country Codes Cheat Sheet
As web designers, sometimes we need to work with lists of countries. For instance there is a new EU cookie law coming into action soon – that only applies to Europe. There is a worldwide standard that gives each country a 2 letter code.
The country code standard makes it easy for developers to combine different API’s consistently (standards are good). However there’s loads of country codes – and in order to fulfil our legal obligations I needed a list of 2 letter country codes applicable to Europe only. So, I created a list of codes that you can see (and use) below.
For a full list of all the ISO 2 letter country codes check out the Wikipedia page on the subject.
The European Country Codes
- AL – Albania
- AD – Andorra
- AM – Armenia
- AT – Austria (sometimes OE in German-speaking countries: for “Oesterreich”)
- BY – Belarus
- BE – Belgium
- BA – Bosnia and Herzegovina
- BG – Bulgaria
- CH – Switzerland (from Confoederatio Helvetica)
- CY – Cyprus
- CZ – Czech Republic
- DE – Germany
- DK – Denmark
- EE – Estonia
- ES – Spain
- FO – Faeroe Islands
- FI – Finland
- FR – France
- GB – United Kingdom (from Great Britain and Northern Ireland)
- GE – Georgia
- GI – Gibraltar
- GR – Greece
- HU – Hungary
- HR – Croatia
- IE – Ireland
- IS – Iceland
- IT – Italy
- LI – Liechtenstein
- LT – Lithuania
- LU – Luxembourg
- LV – Latvia
- MC – Monaco
- MK – Macedonia
- MT – Malta
- NO – Norway
- NL – Netherlands
- PL – Poland
- PT – Portugal
- RO – Romania
- RU – Russian Federation
- SE – Sweden
- SI – Slovenia
- SK – Slovakia (Slovakian Republic)
- SM – San Marino
- TR – Turkey
- UA – Ukraine
- VA – Vatican City State
Since I made it for myself, here’s the list as a nice handy PHP array as well.
<?php
$eu_countries = array(
'AL', 'AD', 'AM', 'AT', 'BY', 'BE', 'BA', 'BG', 'CH', 'CY', 'CZ', 'DE',
'DK', 'EE', 'ES', 'FO', 'FI', 'FR', 'GB', 'GE', 'GI', 'GR', 'HU', 'HR',
'IE', 'IS', 'IT', 'LI', 'LT', 'LU', 'LV', 'MC', 'MK', 'MT', 'NO', 'NL', 'PL',
'PT', 'RO', 'RU', 'SE', 'SI', 'SK', 'SM', 'TR', 'UA', 'VA',
);
?>
Note – I know this isn’t a proper cheat sheet – but it’ll save me some time, and I can’t ctrl-c an image into my IDE 🙂
Awesome, Ben – very handy. Any chance you’d submit it to my cheat sheet site (cheatography.com)? You can link to it here, or create a full page / PDF version, whichever you prefer 🙂
Hey Dave – would be happy to submit it. I didn’t realise your site was open to submissions. I used your original cheat sheets quite a bit so would be happy to contribute 🙂
Thanks Ben – just noticed you’d added it (external links go through an approval process – sorry for the delay). Thanks very much! 🙂
This is tremendously handy – thank you!
Would love to see how you use it 🙂
Very useful
ps used with MySql for tax summary (and several otherplaces) :
SELECT …
IF(b.country_id NOT IN (‘”.implode(“‘,'”, EU_COUNTRIES).”‘), ‘EXEMPT’,
IF(i.tax_amount > 0.00, ‘TAXABLE’, ‘ZERO’)) as class,
… where EU_COUNTRIES is a constant
perfect use for it! 🙂 I actually had to do some stuff for tax summaries a couple of days ago as well!
Important: This is a list of european countries, not EU (European Union)
Countries like Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Switzerland, Norway are not in the EU.
Ah – interesting distinction. I shall clarify in my post as well. Thanks a lot!
Hey!
Great thing this, but the country code for Poland is PL, not PO.
(See for yourself: Wikipedia)
not sure how I missed that. Thanks!
You should update the PHP copy/paste code with this too for lazy people :).
Good call – all done 🙂
Thank you good sir !!!
Thanks man! But please do clarify in the post that this is not a list of EU countries but of European countries. EU rules rarely apply to Russia…
What about Serbia 🙁
Hey Nikola – do you know what the code should be for Serbia? Happy to add it in!
nice
You forgot Liechtenstein – LI
Thanks – I’ve added it now! 🙂
Much appreciated, especially the array.