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Italy has the highest levels of corruption in Europe, study shows

Corruption is more costly to Italy than any other European country, leaving it lagging behind other western European nations.

Published: 7 December 2018 13:13 CET
Italy has the highest levels of corruption in Europe, study shows
Photo: DepositPhotos

The Italian economy loses 236 billion euros a year to corruption, which is about 13 percent of gross domestic product, or equal to 3,903 euros per inhabitant.

The figure is twice as high as that of France, where it’s equal to 120 billion euros and 6 percent of GDP, and that of Germany, where corruption costs 104 billion euros (4 percent of GDP). 

The analysis was conducted by European Green Party for the European Parliament, based on figures from the American NGO RAND.

89 percent of Italians think that corruption is “extremely widespread” in their country, with 84 percent convinced that it is “part of the business culture” of Italy.

The study highlights how, in Italy, the wasted money could resolve all of the country’s major social problems, Repubblica writes.

Photo: DepositPhotos

The cost of corruption in Italy is more than one and a half times the national public health budget.

It's also 12 times bigger than the funding for the country’s police force, 16 times the funding set aside to combat unemployment, and 337 times bigger than the budget set aside for Italy’s scarce social housing.

In Italy, 80 percent of inhabitants believe that corruption is so widespread in their country that the majority don’t bother to report it.

The figure was the same in more than half of European member states, with the same figures found in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain.

READ ALSO: Nine arrested for corruption over new Rome stadium

While Italy suffered most from the cost of corruption overall, Romania was found to be the most corrupt country when looking at the cost as percentage of GDP.

Romania loses 15.6 percent of GDP to corruption every year.

More generally, corruption seems to be a bigger problem for Eastern Europe, as well as for Italy: Bulgaria, Latvia and Greece lose about 14 percent of GDP each year, Croatia 13.5 percent, Slovakia 13 and the Czech Republic 12. 

On the other hand, the Netherlands came out as the least corrupt European country.  Corruption here costs just 0.76 percent of GDP, although that’s still about 4.4 billion euros.

In total, the European Union loses 904 billion euros of GDP to corruption, if the indirect effects are included in the calculation, such as lost tax revenue and the reduction of foreign investments. 

To put the figures in context it’s said that ending world hunger would cost 229 billion, providing primary education to all the children of the 46 poorest countries on the globe 22 billion, and eliminating malaria four billion.

The study showed that across all European countries, most people think their government's efforts to combat corruption are ineffective.

The only institutions trusted by a large majority are police forces, and trust in European institutions is as low as four percent.

Denmark and Finland came next with four billion each. And in the United Kingdom corruption costs 2.3 percent of GDP, or about 41 billion euros. 

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ECONOMY

Two-thirds of young Italians now living with parents as unemployment rises

The number of people aged 18-34 still living at home is now as high as 75 percent in some parts of Italy, new official data shows, as wages shrink and youth unemployment grows.

Published: 16 May 2024 15:24 CEST
Two-thirds of young Italians now living with parents as unemployment rises

The stereotype of the Italian ‘mammone‘, who lives with mamma until well into his 30s or beyond, is alive and well as the number of young people living at home has risen again according to the latest annual economic report by national statistics bureau Istat, published on Wednesday.

In 2022, some 67.4 percent of all 18-34 year-olds in Italy were living with at least one parent, an increase of almost eight points in twenty years – the rate in 2002 was 59.7 percent.

The number was as high as 75 percent in the southern regions of Campania and Puglia, Istat found.

The phenomenon remained, as ever, more prevalent in young men, with 74 percent of them compared to 66 percent of women in the same age group living at home.

“Today’s young people have increasingly protracted transitions into adulthood,” read the report.

The phenomenon is not unique to Italy, with the most recent Eurostat data, from 2021, showing a similar trend among the 16-29 age group in Italy as well as other southern European countries including Croatia, Greece, and Portugal.

While cultural factors are often suggested as a potential cause, with Italians known for close family ties, Italy’s economic situation appears to play a far larger role in keeping young people living at home for longer.

Istat’s report pointed to a high prevalence of insecure employment among younger Italians, as well as shrinking wages and decreased spending power.

“Permanent employment, which between 2004 and 2023 grew by +9.7 percent, has increased only among the employed over the age of fifty,” Istat noted, partly attributing this to a squeeze on pensions in recent years which means many are retiring later.

READ ALSO:

Italy meanwhile has one of the EU’s highest rates of youth unemployment, which had risen further to 22 percent as of February 2024, according to Eurostat data.

Italian workers of all ages were getting poorer, Istat found, and the number of working people in poverty had risen to 14 percent.

“Despite the improvements observed in the labour market in recent years,” the report said, “Italy retains a very high share of employed people in economically vulnerable conditions.

“Between 2013 and 2023, the purchasing power of gross wages in Italy decreased by 4.5 percent, while in the other major economies of the EU27 it grew at rates between 1.1 percent in France and 5.7 percent in Germany.”

Within this context, the Istat report noted that young Italians were also getting married five years later than in 2002, with men now waiting until an average age of 36.5 before tying the knot, and women 33.6.

KEY POINTS: What is Italy’s government doing to help families?

The age at which women have their first child had also risen, to 31.6 years against 29.7 in 2002.

Italy’s birth rate in 2023 fell to a record low of 379,000 after 15 years of decline, Istat reported in January.

“The substantial decline in births of recent years has deep roots, and is due to the parenting choices (fewer children and increasingly later) of Italian couples today and those of yesterday,” Istat’s latest report found, reporting that lower birth rates 30 years ago also contributed.

Italy’s plunging birth rate and ageing population has been a hot-button topic for the current government, which said this month that it aims to launch a Vatican-backed campaign to increase births to 500,000 per year by 2033.

Italy’s birth rate had previously been boosted by a higher number of births among foreign nationals in Italy, however the number of babies born to non-Italian mothers had also dropped, Istat said, bringing it in line with the trend among the Italian population.

The shift was attributed to various factors, including the challenges immigrants face and the high employment rates among foreign women, many of whom are employed in demanding but low-paid full-time jobs.

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