Low-risk drinking guidelines are usually set by blue ribbon committees based on curves showing relative risk of different levels of alcohol use for key alcohol-attributable disease categories such as liver cirrhosis, stroke or various types of cancer. This approach has certain limitations, as there is no easy way to combine the various risk curves and even for a combined risk curve there is no clear threshold, as all summary risk curves for alcohol tend to increase monotonically after small quantities of consumption. Therefore the present report chose to base risk estimations on the (absolute) lifetime risk of dying, following an approach applied by the developers of the Australian low risk guidelines for alcohol consumption. The lifetime risk approach has three advantages: firstly, absolute risks are easier to understand and clearer to communicate. Secondly, there are already standards in many societies and internationally about acceptable lifetime risk, both for voluntary risk and for involuntary risk. Thirdly, it allows comparisons of lifetime risk of alcohol with other risk factors. This report presents calculations for lifetime absolute risk for various levels of drinking for seven European countries. This report was produced for the National Institute for Health and Welfare, Finland, and arises from the Joint Action on Reducing Alcohol Related Harm (RARHA) which has received funding from the European Union, in the framework of the Health Programme (2008-2013)