EU Public Prosecutor’s Office will be ‘killed softly for doing its job’ says outgoing chief

In a wide-ranging interview, Laura Codruța Kövesi, who wraps up her seven-year tenure on Friday, said: “As I leave my office, I think of this famous Danish TV show Borgen. There is a very famous saying there: ‘In Brussels, no one can hear you scream,’ and unfortunately, this is true,” she said, in a nod to the Ridley Scott blockbuster Alien.

“I am concerned that the EPPO is going to be killed softly because it’s doing its job,” she added in blunt remarks about justice in Europe.

Kövesi also discussed her interactions with the EU institutions, Greece’s farm subsidy scandal and questions of national sovereignty in the interview, which took place via video call from her office in Luxembourg.

This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Your term concludes this week, so what were the main difficulties during your term and what could should happen in a different way by your successor?

When I was appointed, I promised that I would build an efficient, strong and independent institution, which citizens will trust. I think we managed, together with my colleagues, to do this to a large extent. I’m aware that we didn’t succeed in everything, but no one can dispute that we did a good job.

The most important question now is whether this continues. I listened to all the candidates for the European Chief Prosecutor and I was really worried, because one candidate presented himself saying that his project was to normalize EPPO. For someone like me, growing up during communism, this is very threatening. Another candidate, even worse, spoke about maintaining equal distance between the prosecution office and all the political parties. But how will this be compatible with an independent office?

After the first years of activity, we have results that only few people expected. We have a lot of reactions, and I think we have proved the law is equal for everybody. Now the key challenge for the EPPO and especially for my successor will be to keep the EPPO independent and credible.

What has surprised you most during those this term?

The last seven years was the toughest job that I have ever had. I didn’t have a lot of surprises. But I have to tell you about the attacks or attempts to undermine our independence. The most blatant attempt to intimidate EPPO happened in Greece, where we had this issue with the renewal of the European delegated prosecutors.

The main challenge of the EPPO will be this one: the revision of regulation.  It is clear that this will show who is a true friend of an independent judiciary.

The European Public Prosecutor’s Office’s logo is seen at its headquarters in Luxembourg on June 1, 2021. | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images 

The second example was an attack against our credibility. Everybody knows that we are drowning under work, and I understand that there are many priorities, but we have to see whether this is real or is this just a pretext. Here the surprise comes from Poland. We agreed that we need 24 European delegated prosecutors. The expectations were huge, and our credibility is at stake. In this moment, we have only 15. So how can we be credible in Poland? In Hungary, also, we explained exactly what budget we need to do our job, but the Commission proposed half of what we need.

These are few examples how you can, if you want, destroy the credibility of an institution. As I leave my office, I think of this famous Danish TV show Borgen. There is a very famous saying there: “In Brussels, no one can hear you scream,” and unfortunately, this is true. I am concerned that the EPPO is going to be killed softly because it’s doing its job.

You mentioned pressure from local governments, particularly from Greece and Poland. Was there any support from the EU institutions?

Second, a lot of delays. Since 2021, we said that the revision of the EPPO regulation has to start earlier. It’s delayed. Thirdly, I have learned that here everything is complicated — and I thought that Romania is complicated. To give you an example, there are these endless discussions about anti-fraud architecture. We discovered a new continent of crime, and we see the criminal organizations are growing, defrauding the EU budget and national budgets. In the middle of this, should be the fight against organized criminality. Instead, we have endless discussion about how to complicate the life of the prosecutors, and we discuss a lot about this joint intake registry. If there is money to have this new registry electronically, how is it possible that money doesn’t exist for what we really need?

Do you feel that you have managed to shake things up? Have people or institutions started behaving differently?

A lot of changes happened due to the EPPO. The level of detection increased in most of the member states, the level of successful cases increased, and obviously the protection of the EU budget is higher with the EPPO. But still, there are things that are not working the way they should be.

If you had the chance to do it all over again, what is the main thing that you would do differently?

Nothing. I would do the same things, but maybe the others should change their behavior. I thought that there is a big difference between Brussels and what I saw in Romania. But in Romania, or other member states, people are used to work with prosecutors, they know what the prosecutors are doing.

In Brussels, sometimes at EU level, they think that they are above the law, and this for me is a problem. In Romania, or other member states, if you are called in for a statement, you show up, because you know that you have to do this. Here, sometimes there is this feeling that you are above the prosecutors, you are above the law, and you don’t come.

Some prosecutors that could be politically motivated, are in a position to delay the outcome of cases, postpone hearings, meetings. Have you experienced that in some countries more than others?

All our European delegated prosecutors are very independent, and our agenda is not based on any electoral campaign or other interests than what is written in our regulation. There are some cases that can be delayed, but this is not because the prosecutors do not want to do their job.

EU flags fly outside the European Commission’s Berlaymont building in Brussels on Feb. 17, 2025. | Thierry Monasse/Getty Images 

Some politicians think that they are above the law, and if you are called in for a statement, you have to come, and it’s not all the time the same understanding. So, this is an example in which the prosecutors cannot finalize the cases.

Do you refer to Pfizergate?

I will not comment anything on specific investigations.

You have noted in your reports that the reporting rate from EU institutions has been minimal. Are there instances where they saw corruption cases and they haven’t reported it back?

When I started, I heard that we are a clean country, and we don’t have corruption. And I said many times that there is no clean country. But with the EPPO, this has changed a lot.

But I will not be shy to tell you, that especially when important people are involved in the investigation — be it high-profile politicians or rich people who are connected to the political class — we have difficulties in exercising our competence because we still have this issue of conflict of competences.

Unfortunately, we witness situations in which, when we have opened an investigation and when we were ready to have different measures in our investigation, suddenly on national level, a case with the same object was opened, and the general prosecutor decided that we are not competent to investigate the case. And this is something that affects the capabilities and the capacity of EPPO to make investigations.

In several countries the argument against cooperating with the EPPO is that they would be eliminating their country’s sovereignty. How do you respond to that?

Is it better to have the sovereignty of criminals? Because this is what you have to put in balance. The criminal organizations in Europe are not national anymore, and they take advantage of this fragmentation that exists.

We are still applying the national legislation; we are still going in front of the national court. I don’t think you lose your sovereignty; you win more protection and more security for your citizens. Is it better to let the criminals operate freely, to take advantage of the fragmentation, to take advantage that no one has a helicopter view to see how they operate on the entire territory of the EU?

In Greece some politicians say that they could simply stop working with the EPPO. Can a country that joined the EPPO simply pull out?

Well, I don’t know if they want to go out of the European Union or not, but to go out from EPPO, it’s almost impossible. These kinds of comments don’t do anything else than to prove exactly what I said. There will be attempts to kill the EPPO because we do our job.

Some politicians speak about an independent and efficient judiciary, until you touch them and until you go close to their inner circle. In that moment, the prosecutors are abusive, they have a political agenda, they are not needed. After that, they start to try to diminish your competence, to let you without money, to dismantle the specialized police.

There are currently cases being investigated in several countries involving political figures or parties, like the OPEKEPE farm scandal in Greece or in France. These countries have elections soon and the EPPO is criticized for being politically motivated. How do you make sure that there is an outcome in all these cases that doesn’t coincide with elections?

You mentioned OPEKEPE, we just finalized some indictments there. The cases are in court. But all the noise was created to blame EPPO that we play politics instead of discussing what happened in reality. You have politicians who want to cover the discussion, try to undermine the credibility of EPPO. You come and you create a smoke. Oh, we will have elections. Look what the EPPO is doing.

If you ask EPPO to abstain and to not do anything because there are elections in Europe, we will not work at all. And our job is not to check when the electoral campaign is, but to check if the honest farmers have access to EU money. Instead, the money was allocated to different people who pretended they are farmers and used the money to go in fancy trips and have luxurious cars, and the honest farmers didn’t get anything. I don’t see any links between what we did, our activity, our cases, and electoral campaigns. The only connection is when you have some unhappy politicians, they want to attack EPPO, and they try to intimidate and stop us from doing our job.

The integrity of the OPEKEPE investigation was questioned here in Greece after a case file was sent to Parliament for lifting the immunity of 11 MPs. Eventually, only four of these were sent to court, and there was criticism it was done hastily. Was something done wrong there?

No, nothing went wrong from our perspective. When we ask for the lifting the immunity, it’s not about the guilt. It’s just a condition to allow the prosecutors to make the investigation and to gather evidences.

What are your personal plans for the future?

Well, let’s not speak about my personal plans. Let’s focus on the EPPO. I will see after I finish my mandate.

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