Beppe Grillo, leader of the Italian anti-establishment 5 Star Movement, claims that Italy is the third largest contributor to the EU's budget. Is this true?

On the European Commission's website we can find all the data for the 2012 budget. Selecting the "Revenue" and "Total National Contribution" sections we can see that Italy is indeed the third contributor with €14.98 billion, behind Germany (22.82 billion) and France (€19.8 billion).

This should not be all that shocking, considering that the contributions to the budget are primarily based on GDP and Italy is the EU's fourth biggest economy. Moreover, Italy is the fifth largest recipient of of EU funds, totaling €10.96 billion. Yet, Italy's bronze medal can perhaps still be surprising, considering that some countries have obtained compensation mechanisms for their contributions (most prominently, the UK with its rebate).