How Italy’s mafia learnt to think small with EU cash

For decades, organised crime in southern Italy was synonymous with spectacular corruption scandals when it came to syphoning off EU money.

Now new research into the distribution of EU funds suggests the criminal world has adapted to Europe’s tightening anti-fraud regime. Not by becoming bolder, but by becoming more modest.

The study, conducted by researchers Marco Di Cataldo, Elena Renzullo, and Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, analysed 1.5 million EU-funded projects in Italy between 2007 and 2020 and cross-referenced them with judicial records identifying municipalities infiltrated by organised crime. 

The researchers from the London School of Economics focused on five southern regions that both receive a lot of EU funding and have long struggled with mafia infiltration: Calabria, Campania, Sicily, Apulia, and Basilicata.

Their conclusion is striking: municipalities whose local governments colluded with criminal organisations received up to 93% less direct EU funding than…