I'll be traveling to Europe next month. What's a good option for a utility, non tactical/combat knife that won't violate laws, or raise eyebrows, in Western and Mediterranean Europe, excluding England.
That's a huge range of countries, I'm not sure where you could get actual legal advice for such a broad question, there is a wikipedia article covering many countries but as always take with a pinch of salt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knife_legislation
Even specific articles on the topic like this one
https://blademag.com/knife-collecting/tips-for-traveling-with-knives-in-europe are spotty on the fine detail (his understanding of UK law was wrong) even if generally good.
All the laws I am aware of tend to focus in on a similar things:
- assisted or rapid opening blades, the civilization-destroying flick knife / switchblade
- weird **** from martial arts movies such as nunchuks, shuriken, balisongs etc
- big blades like 'swords', 'sabres' or 'machetes', usually with no actual definition
- "Da youth", meaning under-21s or under-18s
But there's generally a catch-all 'elastic law' element too, giving police wide discretion to arrest for carrying absolutely any 'weapon' with what can be construed as intent to commit harm, or even if carrying "without good cause". Also specific places may have stricter rules, such as schools etc.
In general, a fairly normal manual pocket knife
should not cause problems unless it looks 'evil', you take it somewhere sensitive, or you give the police cause to look hard for a reason to spoil your day. But it's very hard to guess the exact specifics of what the local laws will have. I think France is one of the places where they could arrest you for carrying one of those keyring SAKs if they felt like it, nonetheless many french people carry opinels etc all day every day with no issues.
I know you explicitly excluded England but its worth considering their rules, which unless you have "good cause" limits you to manual opening non-locking folder with a blade 3" or less, not disguised
, no images or words suggesting violence
. That's the classic 'pen knife / Swiss Army knife" and should be
reasonably safe anywhere in Europe.
https://www.gov.uk/buying-carrying-knives