There is a strand of public debate on the continent that never ceases to fascinate those whose profession involves analysing figures with even a modicum of rigour. It is the ‘creative finance’ of popular perception: that surreal discipline whereby the gravity of public spending is not calculated on the basis of the size of the deficit or its macroeconomic sustainability, but on the basis of how convenient it is to use it as an electoral bogeyman.

Over the last four and a half years, the catchphrase that has been repeated with cloying regularity on television talk shows, in pub discussions and on social media feeds can be summed up in an almost hypnotic phrase: “Enough aid for Ukraine. Let’s look after us Italians first. We’re being bled dry.”

Now, it is a well-established fact that political propaganda thrives on hyperbole. But when hyperbole meets utter ignorance of objective facts, the result ceases to be a respectable subjective opinion and becomes a farce.
Or, to be more precise, a narrative that is at times sickening and in need of some basic numeracy education.

So let’s provide a brief accounting ‘primer’ for those who are a bit slow on the uptake. It’s not a sin to be unaware of public finance balances. The sin, if anything, is to presume to pontificate smugly on subjects one knows nothing about.

The coffee accounts: how much does Kyiv really cost us?

To bring the discussion back down to earth, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy comes to our aid: a German research centre that tracks, with admirable precision, every single euro, dollar or krona sent to Kyiv in the form of military, financial or humanitarian aid.

The latest report from the Kiel Institute covers the period from 24 January 2022 to 30 April 2026. Four and a half years of conflict, emergencies and strategic geopolitical decisions.

Well, if we adjust the total contribution made by the Italian Republic and divide it by the resident population, the final figure for our supposed financial drain comes to 72 euros per person.
You read that correctly.
Not 7,200 euros, not 720 euros. Seventy-two euros over four and a half years.

If this staggering figure seems unsustainable for the coffers of the eurozone’s third-largest economy, let’s break it down further with a calculator. We’re talking about around 16 euros a year, which works out at just over 1.30 euros a month. Essentially, Italy’s contribution towards supporting a country under siege on Europe’s doorstep amounts, for each citizen, to roughly the cost of one coffee at a café a month.
This is the immense financial sacrifice for which we are supposedly ‘bleeding ourselves dry’.
This is the supposed financial drain that is supposedly bringing the Italian welfare state to its knees, forcing us to give up our national priorities.

The map of hypocrisy: a forty-fold gap

However, if we look beyond our own Alps, the map produced by the Kiel Institute tells an even more disheartening story, laying bare the utter political and strategic fragmentation of our continent.

Faced with the same geopolitical landscape and the same threat to European security, Europe has split into two clearly distinct blocs.
On the one hand, we have the Nordic-Baltic alliance, namely the NB8 cooperation framework, which brings together the five Nordic countries and the three Baltic republics. On the other, the four largest economies in the European Union, namely Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

The contrast between these two worlds is almost grotesque.
Let’s take the two extremes of the Atlantic Alliance: Norway has contributed a whopping 1,909 euros per citizen, whilst Spain has contributed a mere 47 euros, marking a forty-fold gap between two NATO member states.

Looking at the figures for the Nordic-Baltic region, the per capita data reveal a genuine strategic commitment.
Denmark ranks just behind Norway with €1,838 per capita, followed by Sweden with €999 and Estonia with €688. Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Iceland also make significant contributions, amounting to €644, €549, €348 and €259 per resident respectively.

Overall, average per capita expenditure in the NB8 area is just under 904 euros per person.
And what about the so-called ‘Big 4’ of the European Union?
The combined average expenditure of Germany, at 354 euros, France at 115 euros, Italy at 72 euros and Spain at 47 euros, amounts to a paltry 147 euros per person. That is one-sixth of the contribution made by the northern countries.

The paradox reaches surreal heights when one realises that every single country in the NB8 bloc spends more per capita than France, or that Estonia — a nation of just 1.4 million inhabitants with a GDP that is certainly not comparable to that of the industrial powerhouses of the West — has provided a per capita contribution almost double that of Germany.

Given this situation, to claim that the major European economies are exhausting their resources in order to support Ukraine is not merely a misrepresentation of the figures: it is a blatant diplomatic provocation towards our allies in the North and East.

72 euros versus 52,000 euros: the real Italian paradox

But the real gem of our domestic debate emerges when one compares the collective hysteria over the 72 euros with the actual structure of the Italian public budget.

One need only cite a single, unshakeable fact to bring down the entire house of cards that is populist rhetoric: today, every single Italian citizen — from newborns to ninety-year-olds — is burdened with a per capita public debt of around 52,000 euros.

A generational burden built up over decades of reckless fiscal decisions, deficit-fuelled current expenditure, handouts handed out indiscriminately, and electoral manoeuvres approved with disconcerting nonchalance by virtually the entire political spectrum. Mind-boggling figures that no one seems to challenge with the same fervour; monstrous accounting figures that are dismissed with a shrug or accepted as an inescapable, cynical and deceitful fate.

And this is where the Italian view of the economy borders on the absurd.

We are a country that coexists peacefully (or with general indifference) with a debt of 52,000 euros per person, accumulated to fund all manner of things, yet which regularly flies into a rage and cries scandal over 72 euros spent over four and a half years to ensure the geopolitical stability of our continent.

This accounting madness is driving me mad: the 52,000 euros we’re already in debt is a negligible detail, whilst the 72 euros spread over 54 months is the final straw that sends us into bankruptcy. The 72 euros. Not the 52,000.

The illusion of stolen resources

Then there’s the classic bar-room objection – the knee-jerk reaction of those who, feigning social concern, declare: “We should be putting that money into healthcare or social care, rather than sending it to Ukraine”.

It takes no more than thirty seconds to debunk this accounting fallacy too. The National Health Fund manages 143 billion euros, and the state coffers disburse around 200 billion annually for various forms of healthcare and welfare. Yet we are left with endless waiting lists, A&E departments on the brink of collapse and public services that are often in a pitiful state.

Don’t you ever have the faintest suspicion that the problem isn’t the laughable sums sent to Kyiv, but the fundamentally appalling way in which, year in, year out, we allocate and squander these vast amounts of our own money?

The truth is quite different. The problem isn’t the budget balance, but the fact that Ukraine is simply a thorn in the side of a certain political and social faction.
And it’s a thorn in their side for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the economy.
Let’s stop the hypocrisy: if Ukraine had been invaded by France instead of Russia, we can be sure that today it would be much more popular with many of those champions of public spending who put Italians first.
Just my feeling, mind you.

The harsh reality of the figures

Mathematics, fortunately for us, retains the unyielding habit of not bowing to personal opinions or the demands of propaganda.

We can discuss geopolitical strategies, diplomacy, foreign policy choices and international positioning for as long as we like. These are legitimate and necessary debates in a mature democracy. But what is unacceptable in an economic analysis worthy of the name is to invent a financial reality that does not exist in order to fan the flames of public resentment.

Italy is not going out of its way for Ukraine. Italy is providing only the bare minimum, moving at a snail’s pace at the back of the queue behind the major Western economies and leaving the burden of safeguarding the continent’s security to the Baltic and Nordic countries.

The 72 euros over four and a half years is an accurate snapshot of our contribution: a perfectly sustainable expenditure, marginal in budgetary terms and all too modest in geopolitical terms.
Everything else is propaganda aimed at the functionally illiterate. And the figures – whether the pied pipers of public spending like it or not – tell exactly that.