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

Cross-posted from TheLocal.it

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 the American NGO RAND for the European Parliament.

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.

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.

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…

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