BACKGROUND: A systematic monitoring of minimum legal purchasing age (MLPA) policies in Europe is lacking. This study addressed three research questions: (1) How are MLPA policies currently enacted in Europe? (2) What changes to MLPA policies have occurred in European countries since 2000? (3) How many minors and young adults in Europe are legally permitted to purchase alcohol, and how have these numbers changed since 2000? METHODS: For 30 European countries, MLPA policies were classified by reviewing law texts. The population with legal access to alcohol was estimated by matching policy data with the population size of people aged 16 to 20 years. RESULTS: (1) Most countries have adopted 18 years of age as MLPA, but lower limits, down to 16 years of age, are currently in place, especially for lower-content alcoholic beverages, in all German-speaking countries and Denmark. Higher limits, up to 20 years of age are implemented in most Northern European countries. (2) Since 2000, 14 countries have established or increased MLPA regulations. The law changes served to close regulatory MLPA gaps and to harmonise age limits across beverage types. (3) Due to MLPA regulations becoming stricter, the percentage of adolescents aged 16 to 19 years with (some) legal access to alcohol has decreased from 81.1% (20.3 out of 25.1 million) in the year 2000 to 59.2% in 2025 (13.5 out of 22.8 million). CONCLUSION: MLPA regulations have become more restrictive, but three out of five adolescents aged 16 to 19 years still had legal access to alcohol in 2025.
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Manthey et al. (2026) studied this question.
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