Italy has the lowest level of economic culture in Europe.

1. What the claimant likely means — unpacking "economic culture"

The phrase may point to civic attitudes toward business, entrepreneurship, savings, fiscal responsibility, or institutional quality; none of the supplied sources use a single index called "economic culture," so any judgment must be reconstructed from proxies such as GDP, export performance, innovation rankings, private wealth and governance indicators ^{[5] [6] [4]}. Using those proxies gives a mixed picture: robust private wealth and export-oriented specialisations coexist with entrenched informality, political instability and regional divergence that complicate broad cultural generalisations ^{[4] [1] [3]}.

2. Hard strengths that contradict "lowest in Europe"

Italy is the third-largest economy in the eurozone and among the world’s top ten economies by GDP, with substantial private wealth and export capacity in sectors from machinery to luxury fashion and pharmaceuticals, which indicates sophisticated economic activity rather than some minimal "culture" of economics ^{[2] [1] [7]}. Italy also ranks highly on quality-of-life measures and owns one of the largest national gold reserves—facts that underline financial depth and societal development inconsistent with a blanket claim of lowest economic culture ^{[4] [8]}.

3. Real weaknesses that fuel the criticism

At the same time, Italy struggles with persistent low growth, a heavy public debt burden, a sizable underground economy and high youth unemployment in some regions—structural problems that critics point to when arguing Italy lags behind peers in reforms, labour market dynamism and public-sector efficiency ^{[3] [4] [9]}. Regional bifurcation—an industrialised north and a more stagnant south—is repeatedly cited in the sources and explains why Italy can be both strong in certain clusters and weak at the national-policy level ^{[10] [11]}.

4. Institutions, reform and recent trajectory

Recent policy efforts and access to Europe’s recovery funds (NRRP/RRF) aim to address structural bottlenecks and boost investment, and forecasts see modest growth returning—signals that Italy’s economic practices are evolving rather than culturally backward; however, slow implementation has been a recurring problem in spending those funds efficiently ^{[2] [3] [12]}. Credit rating movements and ECB policy adjustments also show Italy remains fully engaged with international financial markets, not isolated by a deficient economic culture ^[4].

5. Alternative interpretations and the limits of the evidence

If "economic culture" is meant as financial literacy, civic trust in institutions, or entrepreneurial mindsets, the provided reporting does not supply direct comparative measures across European populations, so the assertion cannot be validated or refuted on those grounds with the current sources ^{[4] [6]}. The dissenting view—Italy combines world-class industrial clusters and persistent governance challenges—better matches the evidence than any blanket ranking of cultural deficiency ^{[1] [7]}.

6. Bottom line: claim assessment

Available, credible indicators show Italy is neither the poorest nor the least economically developed country in Europe; it is a large, complex economy with both internationally competitive sectors and structural weaknesses, so calling it the "lowest level of economic culture in Europe" is an overbroad and unsupported claim based on the supplied reporting ^{[2] [1] [3]}. Any rigorous verdict on "economic culture" would require specific, comparative metrics—financial literacy surveys, institutional-trust indices, entrepreneurship rates—that are not present in the sources provided ^{[6] [5]}.