Nordic countries have the best passports in the World

BUDAPEST, Hungary - EntSun -- Best Citizenships and World Citizenship Council (WCC) conducted a comprehensive study on visa restrictions on 199 passports to 196 countries in the world and has found that European passports, especially from Nordic countries have the best passports in the world when it comes to visa free movement.

For our study, we first extracted data from freely and publicly available visa requirements from wikipedia, using API then we processed the data using python tools and libraries.  We then classified visas into three categories depending on visa restrictions and then assigned points to the PBS (Passport based scoring) model.

• Visa free movement with just a passport
• Hard visas (Paper visa required from consulate/embassy)
• Soft visas (eVisa / eTA / Visa on arrival)
• Travel bans

The passport scoring model looked beyond visas such as ability to combine dual citizen passports to maximize visa free movement, and consulate protection available to passport holders abroad.

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The PBS model we designed assigned scores based on the passport benefits below. We assigned maximum points to passports that have benefit of full visa free travel, ie. board a plane with just a passport to visit a country with zero restrictions. We then assigned soft visas reduced half point, as we see this as mild visa restriction.

These are the metrics we fed our scoring model as feature vectors.

1. Free movement with just a passport - 1 point
2. Soft visas - 0.5
3. Visa free travel to BIG-6 countries (US,UK, Canada,Russia, China, EU schengen area) - 5 points
4. Dual passport usage - 5 points
5. Consular protection abroad - 5 points
6. Access to UK/US territories with just a passport - 5 points

The results predicted by our model turns out to be quite interesting

Best 10 Passports

These are the best passports in the world. predicted by our scoring model.

1. Denmark / Finland
2. Italy / Sweden
3. Belgium / Spain / Japan
4. Greece / Norway / Portugal
5. Singapore
6. Hungary / Switzerland / United States / United Kingdom
7. Poland
8. France / Ireland
9. Germany
10. Luxembourg / Netherlands

Worst 10 Passports

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These are the worst performing passports in the world  at the bottom

1. Afghanistan
2. Somalia
3. Yemen
4. Syria
5. Iraq / North Korea
6. Eritrea / Ethiopia
7. DR Congo
8. Pakistan
9. Libya / Sudan
10. Nepal

The study has also found the free movement with passports will decline by 14% worldwide, when European Union and United Kingdom begins implementing ETAs in the future.

"As more countries impose visa restrictions on passports, sadly the freedom of traveling with just a passport is declining. In the future, everybody is required to carry eVisa or eTA in addition to passport before boarding the plane. Passports wont be good enough"., said Mr. Balakrishnan who designed the PBS scoring model for passports.

The full study on passports is available here
https://best-citizenships.com/2020/01/12/best-passport-rankings-2020/