There is a gap in the European Public Prosecutor’s Office area, European Chief Prosecutor Laura Kovesi told the European Parliament’s budget, budget control and civil liberties committees on Friday.
Four months after the creation of the new service, which is supposed to expose abuses of European funds, Koveshi admitted that he could not investigate all cases in Slovenia, as well as international signals related to the country. The reason is that Ljubljana has not yet nominated its candidates for European delegated prosecutors to work on the spot. Koveshi called this a “dangerous precedent” that threatens the Union’s financial interests.
In the spring, Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa annulled the competition for European prosecutors and fired the justice minister on suspicion of political influence over the nominated candidates. He promised a quick new competition, but so far Slovenia has not appointed its European delegated prosecutors.
The European Public Prosecutor’s Office, which opened on June 1st, has already received more than 2,000 reports of possible abuses in the 22 participating countries. 350 investigations are also underway, with an estimate of 4.6 billion euros for the affected funds from the European budget. Only one of the cases concerns a suspicion of misappropriation of 500m euros, Koveshi said. However, she refused specific information as she was not allowed to disclose details.
50 of the investigations and 10% of the alerts were transferred to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office by the European Anti-Fraud Office OLAF. Unlike OLAF, Kovesi’s prosecutors can bring completed investigations to court.
Laura Kovesi said 91 European prosecutors have been appointed since June, out of 140 needed by the service. She complained that national authorities in some countries were not very active in providing information and transferring cases that fell within the competence of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office.
The new European service also needs another 70 experts to support its work, but does not have the budget to pay them. Kovesi told the European Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control that she needed 65.6m euros in 2022, while member states provided only 55m, and insisted on updating the service’s funds for this year so that it can hire more financial analysts, legal experts and IT specialists to work on the cases.
Upon her appointment, Laura Kovesi said she expects 3,500 cases to be submitted to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office for investigation in the first year of its work and 2,000 in each subsequent year.
In June, the European Attorney General was in Bulgaria to ask authorities to nominate new candidates for European delegated prosecutors to investigate “Bulgarian” cases, after only four of the 10 nominees had previously been appointed by Kovesi. On 18 September, the Supreme Judicial Council nominated six new candidates for European Delegated Prosecutors. The European body has yet to decide whether their qualifications meet the requirements before they are appointed.
