The Dutch have told their European partners that they are prepared to join the European Prosecutor’s Office that will tackle fraud in the European budget, announced the Bulgarian justice minister Tsetska Tsacheva and European Commissioner Věra Jourová in Sofia on Friday 26 January.
The announcement was made at an informal meeting of EU justice ministers that both women were attending. The Commissioner added that she would now try to convince the remaining countries that have not yet joined the project, such as Malta, Hungary, Poland and Sweden, to participate.
The justice ministers’ discussion focussed on the relations between the future Ombudsman’s Office, which 20 countries have so far joined, and which is due to start working, in theory, from 31 December 2020 with other agencies such as Eurojust and OLAF (see EUROPE 11882 and 11911). At the discussion on Friday morning, it was stressed that duplication must be avoided at all costs, said the Bulgarian minister. Relations with participating member states’ delegated prosecutors need to be defined. A conference on the question will be held in Sofia in March to answer these questions, said the minister.
The ministers did not talk about solutions at this stage for controversial issues relating to the Prosecutor’s Office, such as staffing, said a source, adding that the European Commission would continue to work on the human resources question.
The Commissioner said that the Commission would be giving details over the next few months of the budget to be allocated to the Ombudsman’s Office and a decision to be taken by the member states. She added that in September, it would be decided whether the Ombudsman’s Office’s work would extend to terrorism, as President Juncker suggested last September, or whether it would remain a specialist in European funding and certain cases of cross-border VAT fraud. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)