© 2022 IAI ISSN 2532-6570 IAI COMMENTARIES 22 | 20 - APRIL 2022 1 Pierangelo Isernia os Professor of Political Science and Jean Monnet Chair in Culture and International Relations at the Department of Social, Political and Cognitive Sciences, University of Siena. Rossella Borri is Field manager at the Laboratory of Political and Social Analysis (LAPS), Department of Social, Political and Cognitive Sciences, University of Siena. Sergio Martini is Post-doctoral Researcher at the Department of Social, Political and Cognitive Sciences, University of Siena. On 16 March, a sweeping majority in the Italian Chamber of Deputies approved order 9/3491-A/35 committing the Italian government to raise the defence budget to 2 per cent of GDP. 1 Taken in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this decision strengthens Italy’s adherence to the commitment made by NATO countries in 2004 and reiterated at the 2014 NATO summit in Newport, Wales. The announcement comes after half a decade of increasing Italian defence spending. Having decreased from 1.5 per cent of GDP in 2010 to 1.2 per cent in 2015, Italy’s military expenditures started to grow again, reaching 1.6 1 Gianluca De Rossi, “Ukraine. ‘Italy Increases Military Spending to 2% of GDP’, Yes from the Chamber. How Much Russia and NATO Spend on Arms”, in Il Messaggero, 17 March 2022, https://www.ilmessaggero.it/en/ukraine._italy_ increases_military_spending_to_2_of_gdp_ yes_from_the_chamber._how_much_russia_ and_nato_spend_on_arms-6569481.html. per cent of GDP in 2020. This fgure is still considerably lower than the UK’s 2.2 per cent or France’s 2 per cent, but higher than Germany’s and Spain’s 1.4 per cent. 2 To understand the broader context within which Italy has decided to renew its commitment to the NATO target, Italian public opinion should be factored in. In this respect, opinion polls conducted prior to the war in Ukraine can shed some light on Italian attitudes toward defence spending in general and the 2 per cent NATO pledge specifcally. In a previous article, we analysed Italian public opinion trends about military spending over several decades. 3 On the whole, Italians have 2 See the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database, https://milex.sipri.org/sipri. 3 Pierangelo Isernia, “Difesa: quanti italiani disposti a spendere di più e perché”, in How Italians View Military Spending by Pierangelo Isernia, Rossella Borri and Sergio Martini