The European Chief Prosecutor of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), Laura Kövesi, once again criticised the Slovenian government’s delay in appointing European Delegated Prosecutors on Friday 1 October.
“Our main challenge: we’re not fully operational in all participating Member States. Slovenia failed to designate candidates for European Delegated Prosecutors”, Mrs Kövesi said in an exchange with the European Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control. As a consequence, “we can not deal with Slovenian cases falling under our competences” and this situation also has a damaging impact on “cross-border investigations” originating in one of the other 21 participating EU countries and involving Slovenia, she added.
On Friday, the European Commission said it was in close contact with the Slovenian authorities regarding the appointment of European Delegated Prosecutors. It has not opened any specific infringement proceeding at this stage.
The Chief Prosecutor indicated that since its launch at the beginning of June, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office had received 2,000 reports and initiated 350 investigations, of which 50 were referred by OLAF. The damage to the EU budget amounts to about “€4.6 billion”, Mrs Kövesi noted. She emphasised the added value of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, which can speed up proceedings and reveal the cross-border nature of several cases that were initially dealt with in isolation.
Resources. Mrs Kövesi mentioned several issues that are holding back the deployment of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, such as the recruitment procedure, which is incomplete at this stage. In the Member States, seconded staff support the activities of the EPPO, but the fact that these staff do not have the status of employees of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office prevents them from having access to the case management system.
Above all, Mrs Kövesi stressed the importance of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office having sufficient budgetary and human resources to carry out its task. For 2022, we have requested a budget of €65.6 million and the recruitment of 120 experts at central level, she explained.
The representative of the European Commission indicated that the EU institution, after reviewing the future workload of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, will “probably” propose to increase the budget of the European entity in autumn.
The vast majority of MEPs who spoke supported Mrs Kövesi’s approach and the increase in the budget available to EPPO to carry out its work.
It should be noted that the Chief Prosecutor neither confirmed nor denied the allegation that the European Public Prosecutor’s Office had opened an investigation into the conflict of interest involving the Czech Prime Minister, Andrej Babiš (see EUROPE 12722/9). (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)