On Tuesday 1 June, the European Union celebrated the long-awaited launch of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO). A day that was described as “historic”, but undermined by the missing appointments of some European Delegated Prosecutors.
“We are no longer dreaming about the future, we are making it happen. After more than two decades of legal discussions, followed by difficult political negotiations, we took less than two years for practical preparations. This is it!”, welcomed the Chief European Prosecutor, Laura Kövesi, at a press conference in the new European Public Prosecutor’s Office in Luxembourg.
“I am convinced that historians of the EU will mark the 1st of June 2021 in bold in their books and they should. This is an extraordinary achievement for the European Union and for the public. This is a great day for taxpayers“, said European Commission Executive Vice-President Věra Jourová.
She recalled how, during her mandate as European Commissioner for Justice, she had to convince Member States to join the enhanced cooperation establishing the European Public Prosecutor’s Office. “At the beginning we had only 14 Member States, today we have 22 participating countries – with one more hopefully ready to join soon”. Sweden has expressed interest in joining the EPPO in 2022.
The launch of this new body, which will investigate and prosecute fraud related to the expenditure and revenue of the EU budget, cross-border VAT fraud, money laundering and corruption, is timely.
“It is all the more urgent and crucial to rely on the action of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office when the European economy will soon be endowed with a very important budget for the post-Covid economic recovery”, stressed the current European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders.
The first cases have already been referred to the EPPO: the very first case came from Germany and several others from Italy. According to the statistics received from the participating countries, the EPPO expects to deal with about 3,000 cases each year, but with Next Generation EU, the number of cases is likely to be even higher.
A celebration undermined by missing nominations
The only problem is that Slovenia (which will hold the EU Council Presidency starting in July) and Finland have still not appointed their European Delegated Prosecutors.
The European Chief Prosecutor has repeatedly criticised the decision of the Slovenian authorities to annul the procedure for the appointment of the two Slovenian Delegated Prosecutors to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (see EUROPE 12729/11, 12707/31).
“No one can stop the EPPO to start, even if one Member State did not propose the European Delegated Prosecutors to be appointed”, Laura Kövesi said on Tuesday.
The Regulation establishing the EPPO provides that, in exceptional circumstances, the European prosecutor of a Member State may replace the European Delegated Prosecutor. However, she said that the Slovenian government’s attitude was a “lack of sincere cooperation”.
Didier Reynders said he believed that Finland will propose its candidates in the coming weeks, but for Slovenia, “no positive response has been received so far”. The Commission therefore intends to ask the Slovenian authorities for an explanation of the reasons for re-launching the process and for transparency in the selection process.
“Of course, if we don’t have a positive reaction in the near future we will analyse all the possible avenues to force Slovenia to fulfil the obligations of the regulation”, he said.
It should be recalled that the appointment of the 22 European prosecutors did not go smoothly either. In the cases of the Portuguese (see EUROPE 12634/11) and Belgian (see EUROPE 12639/20) prosecutors, where the EU Council decided to deviate from the ranking made by the selection board of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, cases are pending before the CJEU General Court.
The European Commission intends to follow these cases closely to see whether or not there have been irregularities in the procedure, Didier Reynders said. In addition, discussions with Member States have been launched on the need to change the selection method in the future, but no decision has yet been taken on this.
For her part, Laura Kövesi recalled that the European Public Prosecutor’s Office was not involved in this nomination process, but indicated that she had “no doubts on the independence of all European Prosecutors and European Delegated Prosecutors”. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)