Much of the time, the further back in time you go, the less recognizable countries become, and the harder it is to tell if they really are the same country. Like, was the USSR Russia or was it its own thing entirely? Was the Holy Roman Empire Germany? Was the Papal State that a city? In addition to that, lots of countries have kind of been going back and forth between existing and not existing for centuries. So, picking one definitive start date when a country was founded is usually kind of impossible. With that in mind, please enjoy this video of me going through and saying when each country was founded. Here's the criteria I'm using, but as one might expect it is somewhat arbitrary. By my count, there are 12 countries in Europe that have existed continuously for at least 500 years. Austria, Portugal and Monaco all broke off from other countries, none of which still exist today. Conversely, Spain and Switzerland both formed from the merger of smaller entities, Spain from the Union of Castel and Eragon, and Switzerland from the confederation of the cantons of Uri, Schwarz and Intervilton, although it wouldn't get full independence from the Holy Roman Empire for another 300 years. France evolved out of West Francia, one of the three kingdoms that the old Frankish kingdoms split into, while Russia happened when the city of Moscow broke off from the Golden Horde, and then conquered everything around it. Andora probably has the weirdest origin of any of these countries. It formed when the Bishop of Urgell in Spain and the Count of Fois in France both wanted the territory, so they decided to compromise and basically share it. To this day, the official co-princes of Andora are the Bishop of Urgell, and ever since the French aristocracy was abolished, the president of France. The last few countries I'm going to talk about in this section are pretty hard to say anything about, because they are just older than dirt. Denmark and Sweden probably formed when smaller kingdoms conquered all the kingdoms around them, but it's kind of unclear because no one was really writing much down at the time. While San Marino probably gradually gained independence from the Bishop of Montefelterone the 1300s, although again, the lack of records makes its early history super murky. But those three don't even hold a candle to Vatican City, because like, if you count the papal states and Vatican City is basically the same thing, then that means Vatican City has existed continuously since it broke off from the Byzantine Empire in the 700s. This is going to be a pretty short section, because in the 300 years from 1500 to 1800, I would assert that only three new European countries formed that still exist today. I'm going to say that the United Kingdom started during this period when England and Scotland merged. The Netherlands broke off from both Spain and the Holy Roman Empire simultaneously, which made more sense at the time, because by that point the Holy Roman Empire was less of a country and more of a meaningless dotted line on a map, but that's beside the point. Finally, Lichtenstein, small though it is, was created from the union of two even smaller lordships called Vaduts and Schellenberg. The period after the Napoleonic Wars, but before World War I was a very good time for making new countries. The spread of nationalism had a lot to do with that, but the fact that the Ottomans were kind of disintegrating at the time didn't hurt either. Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, and Romania all broke off from the Ottomans during this period. Other countries which formed during this time include Belgium, which broke off from the Netherlands, Norway, which broke off from Sweden, Germany, which formed when the Kingdom of Prussia took over most of the German speaking countries, and Italy, which formed when the Kingdom of Piedmont, Sardinia, did the same for the Italian countries. Luxembourg was probably the only country from this period whose formation didn't have a lot to do with nationalism. See, at the time it was part of the Netherlands, but when the Netherlands wanted to sell it to France, Germany stepped in, objecting that it really didn't want France to be able to put its military in that particular spot right across Germany's border. All the countries involved eventually reached a compromise where Luxembourg would become independent and, importantly, internationally neutral. The aftermath of World War I was also a pretty good time for nation creation. Both the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Russian Empire were just in utter chaos, so the local authorities in Hungary and Finland didn't have that hard of time declaring independence and taking control. Poland took a more diplomatic approach with major Polish leaders managing to convince the winners of the war to help with the creation of an independent Poland out of what used to be German and Russian territory. Ireland had a much tougher time of things, fighting a two-year long war for independence with the UK as soon as the World War had ended. During these two years, two very large countries in Europe collapsed. First, the USSR and the East followed by Yugoslavia and the South, leading to the creation of Belarus, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Slovenia, and Ukraine. Trap up, there's a small handful of countries that don't fit into any of the previous categories. Malta broke off from the UK in 1964, while Iceland broke off from Denmark in the middle of World War II. More recently, Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993, while Serbia and Montenegro split into Serbia and Montenegro in 2006, making those two countries the youngest in Europe. At least the way I'm counting.