Rule of Law Index: Brazil ahead of Hungary in 2025 ranking

The World Justice Project (WJP) has published its 2025 Rule of Law Index, which ranks countries around the world according to several criteria. Hungary ranks in the lower middle of the table, with a similar rule of law index to countries such as Brazil, Thailand, and Uzbekistan. Denmark tops the overall list, followed by Norway and Finland in third place. Venezuela has the worst result, with Afghanistan one place above it, followed by Cambodia.

Compared to the 2024 result, Hungary dropped six places and has shown a downward trend over the past ten years.

– although our ranking remained unchanged between 2022 and 2024.

The organisation researching the rule of law examines eight aspects:

• Constraints on government powers
• Absence of corruption
• Open government
• Fundamental rights
• Order and security
• Regulatory enforcement
• Civil rights
• Criminal justice

For each criterion, a higher score is considered better, with 1 being the highest possible score. Hungary achieved its highest score in the area of order and security, receiving a score of 0.89.

According to the list, Hungary's greatest weakness was the limitation of government powers, with a score of 0.35 points, placing us very close to the bottom of the list.

Based on this value, we rank 123rd out of 143 countries, just four places ahead of Afghanistan, which ranks last in the overall index. Incidentally, we have not always been in the middle of the pack in the overall index; in 2015, we ranked 36th on the global list. The data can be viewed here.