EU budget gives farms 31% and defence 1.2%. The viral numbers check out

The European Union's budget for 2021 to 2027 puts €378.5 billion, or 31%, into farm policy, against €14.9 billion (1.2%) for security and defence and €25.7 billion (2.1%) for migration and border management. A viral post by @Rothmus making that claim matches the European Commission's own tables, though EU governments also spend far more on their armies outside the Brussels budget.

Rothmus posted the numbers Monday, Nov. 2, and by that night the post had about 438,000 views. His math: farm handouts get 25 times what defence gets and 15 times what borders get. On the Commission's figures it comes to 25.4 times and 14.7 times. He rounded fair.

Sen. Mike Lee quoted it with one line: "The American taxpayer subsidizes European socialism by holding Europe's security umbrella."

This year's budget tells the same story. The EU committed €192.8 billion for 2026. The two farm funds get €53.3 billion, about 28%. Security and defence gets €2.8 billion, about 1.5%, and that heading includes police money from the Internal Security Fund. The military programs, mainly the European Defence Fund and military mobility, come to about €2 billion, roughly 1%. Migration and borders gets €5.0 billion, but €2.1 billion of that pays for asylum and migrant integration. Guarding the actual border, Frontex included, gets about €2.7 billion.

The fair objection is that the EU budget is small, about 1% of the bloc's gross national income, and Brussels doesn't run armies. National governments do. EU countries spent €343 billion on defence in 2024 and an estimated €381 billion in 2025, according to the European Defence Agency. That 2025 number was 2.1% of GDP, the first time the bloc as a whole cleared NATO's 2% guideline since the agency started keeping records. NATO set that guideline in 2014. Europe needed eleven years and a land war next door to hit it.

The United States, meanwhile, covered around 60% of all NATO defence spending in 2025, according to NATO's own annual report. That is why the farm number matters. When Europe pools its money in Brussels, it shows what it actually cares about, and for seven years the answer has been tractors. The tanks were somebody else's problem, and somebody else was the American taxpayer. Lee's line is blunt. The spending tables back him up.

Brussels has noticed. In July 2025 the Commission proposed a 2028 to 2034 budget with €131 billion for defence, security and space, five times the current level. Guaranteed farm income support would fall to €300 billion, from about €387 billion now. Politico called it tanks versus tractors. The plan needs a unanimous vote of all 27 governments plus the European Parliament's consent, and farmers vote in every one of those countries.

Until then the budget stays as written. For every euro Brussels spends on security and defence, it spends 25 on farms.