Denmark may be chilly but it is the most contented place in Europe, while Mediterranean countries are the most miserable, according to a study that concluded that sunshine does not make you happy.

Asked to rate their mood on a scale of one to ten, Scandinavians dominate the happiness league, with Danes averaging 8.3 and Finns 8.1. Italians, Portuguese and Greeks are at the bottom of the table.

The survey also indicated that, despite warmer summers, the British are becoming more depressed. Their happiness rating has slipped in the two years since the last analysis by the University of Cambridge of the European Social Survey.

The keys to contentment are reliable friends, neighbours and jobs as well as trustworthy national institutions such as government, police and monarchy, the researchers concluded.

“The idea that people are happiest along the sunny banks of the Mediterranean does not appear to be true,” said Luisa Corrado, Marie-Curie Fellow at the Faculty of Economics, who led the research. “Italy, Portugal and Greece are consistently among the lowest-scoring countries in the survey, while the highest scores were registered in the chillier surrounds of Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands, and among the table-topping Danes.”

Danish politics may be boring but that is just the way the Danes like it. They have a high GDP and low unemployment but also love their royal family and enjoyed a romantic wedding between Prince Frederik and Mary Donaldson, an Australian advertising executive, in 2004. All these factors contributed to making the area around Copenhagen the happiest out of all 180 regions in 15 EU countries studied.

Lars Bernhard Jorgensen, head of the Wonderful Copenhagen tourist board, said that the secret of the region’s happiness lay in its balance between work and family life, and city and countryside. “We are a small country and there is not a great difference between the top and bottom economically. It is also easy to get decisions made because it not a very hierarchical society.” Dr Corrado added: “The countries that scored highest also reported the highest levels of trust in their governments, laws and each other. The UK shows falling trust in government, the police and other institutions and higher social distrust.”

In the EU-funded survey, about 20,000 people are asked every two years to rate their overall happiness and longer-term sense of fulfilment. The scores are then checked against a more extensive survey designed by psychologists. Happier people tended to have lots of friends and acquaintances, as well as at least one very close friend or a partner. Women generally said that they were happier than men, while the elderly and young were happier than the middle-aged.

The only regions of Britain to average 8 out of 10 were East Anglia, London and the East Midlands, while everywhere else was at 7.5, putting Britain ninth out of 15 EU countries.

People who are indigenous citizens of their country tended to be happier than those who were not, probably because they had wider social networks, Dr Corrado said. “The message to policy-makers is that they should therefore promote social inclusion, because that brings the psychological integration that is essential to happiness,” she said.

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