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The total number of people living with HIV in Western and Central Europe continues to grow. Unprotected sex between men continues to dominate patterns of HIV transmission in Western and Central Europe, although injecting drug use and unprotected paid sex also feature (especially in parts of southern Europe). In France, for example, men who have sex with men account for more than half the men newly diagnosed with HIV, yet they represent only 1.6% of the country's population. This epidemic pattern means that men outnumber women among people living with HIV. In 2009, women comprised 29% of those living with HIV in Western and Central Europe.

There is strong evidence of resurgent HIV epidemics among men who have sex with men in Western Europe. Data from 23 European countries show that the annual number of HIV diagnoses among men who have sex with men rose by 86% between 2000 and 2006. The 3,160 new HIV diagnoses among men who have sex with men in 2007 in the United Kingdom were the most ever reported up to that point. National surveillance data also show significant increases in new HIV diagnoses between 2000 and 2005 among men who have sex with men in Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain. Increases in higher-risk sexual behaviour are associated with this trend. Researchers in Catalonia (Spain), for example, have reported that one third (32%) of men who have sex with men had recently had unprotected anal sex with a casual partner, and surveys in Denmark and Amsterdam (the Netherlands) have reported similar findings.

The HIV epidemics are disproportionately concentrated in racial and ethnic minorities in some countries. Rates of new infections among people who inject drugs have been falling overall-largely due to harm-reduction services. In the Netherlands and Switzerland, for example, HIV infections due to 'social' drug using - several people using the same contaminated injecting equipment - have almost been eliminated: at most 5% of new infections (in 2008 and 2007, respectively) were attributable to injecting drug use.