Slovenian Justice Minister Marjan Dikaučič said in Luxembourg on Thursday 7 October that it was in his country’s interest that the procedure leading to Slovenia’s appointment of its two European Delegated Prosecutors to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office be completed “as soon as possible”.
On the same day, Janez Janša’s government said it was unable to finalise the first selection procedure, as ordered by the Slovenian judiciary on Monday, on the grounds that the two candidates selected in the first procedure, Tanja Frank Eler and Matej Oštir, had since freely applied for a second procedure opened in July.
The Janša government’s refusal to proceed with the first procedure led to the resignation of the previous Minister, Lilijana Kozlovič, in May. Mr Dikaučič said that a resignation on his part was “not the solution” to the problem.
The European Public Prosecutor’s Office started its activities at the beginning of June, but it is not yet operational in Slovenia and cannot launch investigations to protect the EU’s financial interests in that Member State due to the absence of the two European Delegated Prosecutors from Slovenia (see EUROPE 12803/3).
“We are waiting for the procedure to take its course” so that all Member States participate in the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, said European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders, without totally ruling out the activation of other tools to put pressure on Ljubljana. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)