Method & assumptions

Crisiskostgeld is a modelling exercise, not an accounting system. Every counter on this site is a yearly run-rate distributed evenly over the calendar year, so what you see is “how much of this year’s estimated cost has elapsed so far”.

Direct costs

Money that actually leaves a budget: subsidies, reception capacity, military aid, reconstruction, adaptation works. These come closest to hard figures and are drawn from Commission budgets, Eurostat, Bruegel and the Kiel Institute.

Indirect costs

Effects citizens absorb without an invoice: higher prices, lost productivity, health impacts, insurance premiums, foregone growth. These are estimates with wide error bars. They are included because leaving them out systematically understates what a crisis costs an ordinary household.

The counters

Yearly totals are divided by 31,557,600 seconds and multiplied by the time elapsed since 1 January UTC. Counters reset each year. They are illustrative of scale, not real-time settlement data.

Per citizen and per household

Divided by 449,000,000 EU residents and 197,000,000 households. This is an equal split, not a distributional analysis — actual burden varies strongly by country and income. With the labour-force toggle, the bill is divided over the EU labour force (Eurostat, ages 15–74) of 220,000,000 people — those whose work and taxes ultimately carry most of the cost.

Cost timeline

Modelled yearly cost across the EU, 2015–2026.

Data sourcesEvery figure on this site traces back to one of these public datasets and reports.View sources (26)

European Environment Agency — Economic losses from weather- and climate-related extremes in Europe European Commission — EU Adaptation Strategy and climate budget KNMI / Deltacommissaris — Dutch climate scenarios and Delta Programme spending Bruegel — National fiscal policy responses to the energy crisis Eurostat — Energy prices for household consumers CBS — Dutch energy prices, energy poverty and household consumption Kiel Institute — Ukraine Support Tracker European Council — EU support for Ukraine — timeline and instruments Rijksoverheid — Dutch support to Ukraine and defence budget (Defensienota)European Commission — Migration and Home Affairs funding (AMIF, BMVI)OECD — International Migration Outlook COA / WODC — Dutch asylum reception capacity and cost per place Housing Europe — The State of Housing in Europe Eurostat — House price and rent indices CBS / ABF Research — Dutch housing shortage, rents and household formation European Commission — Draghi report — The future of European competitiveness Eurostat — R&D expenditure in the EU CPB — Dutch productivity, growth and public finance projections Eurostat — Government finance statistics — debt and interest since 2008 ESM — European Stability Mechanism — eurozone crisis backstops DNB / CPB — Netherlands: bank rescues (ABN AMRO, SNS) and crisis debt service European Commission — Recovery and Resilience Facility — disbursements and financing OECD / ECDC — Health at a Glance: Europe — care backlogs after imposed measures and lockdowns RIVM / CBS — Netherlands: effects of imposed measures and lockdowns on sick leave and care costs European Commission — EU budget: national contributions and the GNI-based own resource CBS — Netherlands: population and households (StatLine)

Adding a crisis

Anyone can add an entry via add crisis. Entries are stored in your own browser, so you can model scenarios without changing what other visitors see. Wire it to a shared database when you want submissions to be public.