ERA ¦ ERA Talks – #8 Laura Codruța Kövesi, European Chief Prosecutor and head of the EPPO

European Chief Prosecutor Laura Codruța Kövesi on building the European Public Prosecutor’s Office and fighting cross‑border financial crime

The birth and growth of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office – EPPO – represent a major institutional innovation in the EU’s fight against financial crime. In a wide‑ranging interview recorded on 9 March 2026, European Chief Prosecutor Laura Codruța Kövesi set out how the EPPO came into being, how it works in practice, the practical and legal challenges it faces, and why its focus on VAT and customs fraud is central to tackling organised crime across Europe.

A single transnational prosecution office – structure and added value

Kövesi stressed that the EPPO is the first truly transnational prosecution office in EU history: a single prosecution service operating across participating member states. The office now operates in 24 member states with a central headquarters in Luxembourg and a two‑level architecture combining a college of European prosecutors at headquarters and decentralised European Delegated Prosecutors (EDPs) embedded in national systems. There are 182 EDPs distributed according to workload and country size, with a flexible number of EPPO offices per state – from single offices in small states to multiple offices in larger ones.

A distinctive procedural feature is the system of permanent chambers. Each chamber comprises three European prosecutors from different member states and monitors investigations, gives instructions to EDPs, and approves decisions such as dismissals or indictments. Cases are registered in a central electronic case management system that randomly assigns them to a permanent chamber. Kövesi argued that collective decision‑making by a mixed panel strengthens impartiality and independence because no single national authority can exert hierarchical control over decisions that have cross‑border effects.

Kövesi emphasised the practical advantages of working inside the EPPO “zone”. Within that zone, EDPs exchange investigative orders, documents and results directly via the case management system, bypassing slow mutual legal assistance or central authority channels. That real‑time cooperation allows evidence to be gathered in hours or days rather than months, a capability she identified as transformational for cross‑border financial investigations.

Focus on VAT and customs fraud – why this is core to organised crime

One of Kövesi’s most sustained messages was that VAT and customs fraud are not niche offences but the primary revenue streams for organised criminal groups. EPPO statistics for 2025 reflect rapid growth in activity: investigations increased by around 35% over 2024, to 3,620 active investigations, with an overall estimated damage of €67.2 billion. VAT and customs cases represent a large share of those harms, and the EPPO opened more than 350 new cases in 2025, a steep rise from the prior year.

Kövesi described how traditional violent criminal markets have been reshaped by financial criminality. Groups once focused on drugs or human trafficking increasingly pivot to VAT carousel and customs fraud because those crimes are less likely to attract sustained enforcement attention and can yield enormous revenue. The proceeds are then used to finance other criminal enterprises, and violence can follow where groups contest control over schemes. In one EPPO investigation she cited, the same criminal platform used for VAT fraud also sold weapons; investigators found dozens of machine guns linked to a scheme that was primarily financial in appearance.

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"The European Public Prosecutor’s Office has demonstrated that coordinated, transnational criminal investigation can significantly disrupt organised financial crime and protect public budgets. To sustain and expand this impact, clearer legal competences, adequate resources and stronger analytic tools are essential.

Policymakers must prioritise closing legal gaps in cross‑border competence and investing in governed AI and data analytics for investigations. Continued cooperation among the EPPO, OLAF, Europol, Eurojust and AMLA will be decisive in turning tactical successes into strategic, long‑term reductions in organised financial crime."

Emerging technologies, cryptocurrencies and AI – practical challenges for investigations

Kövesi acknowledged that technological advances create both threats and opportunities. Criminals increasingly invest illicit proceeds in cryptocurrencies and exploit weak global regulation to complicate tracing and asset recovery . They use AI‑driven techniques to fragment and automate thousands of small bank transfers to evade reporting thresholds, and they sometimes build bespoke online marketplaces and communication systems that frustrate conventional investigative steps such as evidence preservation and wiretapping .

From the EPPO’s standpoint, AI and advanced analytics promise major gains in processing vast datasets. Kövesi gave the striking example that four EPPO investigations produced roughly 2,000 terabytes of material – orders of magnitude larger than famous leaks such as Panama Papers . With rudimentary tools today, mapping vast networks of shell companies and transactional links consumes time and resources; carefully governed AI tools could speed analysis, reveal hidden connections and generate evidence patterns far more quickly. However, she highlighted two constraints: the need for clear policies addressing data protection and operational security, and persistent resource shortfalls. Budgetary and legal frameworks must evolve before the EPPO can deploy AI at scale for operational analytics.

Cooperation with EU agencies and third countries – avoiding overlap and maximising impact

Kövesi described pragmatic cooperation with EU bodies and national authorities. OLAF remains an administrative partner focusing on non‑criminal administrative investigations and recovery measures; the EPPO complements OLAF with criminal inquiries and seeks closer strategic alignment to maximise asset recovery and to prioritise organised groups. Cooperation with Eurojust is strong because prosecutors “speak the same language”, which helps when coordinating with third countries. Europol is an essential analytical partner due to law enforcement technical capacity, while AMLA is expected to become a strategic EPPO partner once it becomes fully operational, given the money laundering dimension of many EPPO cases.

Kövesi urged a recalibration of the EU’s anti‑fraud architecture to treat organised financial crime as central, not peripheral. She argued that prevention and administrative controls matter, but they are insufficient where transnational organised groups exploit revenue‑side vulnerabilities such as VAT gaps. The EPPO’s experience, she suggested, should reframe anti‑fraud priorities toward proactively dismantling cross‑border organised schemes and recovering criminal assets.

Legal and procedural challenges – competence, judicial review and defence rights

A recurring theme was legal complexity created by diverse national implementations of EU directives and criminal procedure rules. Article 42 of the EPPO Regulation on judicial review raises complicated questions about which EPPO procedural acts produce legal effects on third parties and thus fall to national courts to review. Kövesi explained the EPPO’s position that acts of EDPs that produce legal effects on third parties should be judicially reviewable by the competent national courts, while internal minutes and purely administrative notes should not. She noted that the General Court has issued decisions on aspects of this interpretation but that final definitive answers remain pending in some proceedings, and that the EPPO often must navigate 24 different national procedural systems.

Rights of defence were an important concern. The EPPO applies national standards for access to case materials and other defence rights, because EU directives and national implementations vary markedly. Kövesi conceded that this produces uncertainty in cross‑border cases – for example, when counsel in one jurisdiction must act before courts in another – and that the subject deserves careful consideration in the pending regulation revision. She welcomed dialogues with bar associations and urged contributions to the regulatory review to address practical issues of defence rights, disclosure and cross‑jurisdictional legal representation.

Independence, political pressure and competence conflicts

Independence is the red line for Kövesi. She stressed the legal guarantee of independence in the EPPO Regulation and described operational safeguards: EDPs are proposed by member states based on professional experience and independence, but once appointed they answer to the EPPO, and the permanent chamber system further insulates prosecutorial decisions from national political interference. Nevertheless, Kövesi acknowledged persistent attempts in some states to marginalise EPPO investigations through political pressure or competence disputes. She attributed many disputes to uneven national transpositions of the PIF Directive and divergent institutional allocation of competence (for example, cases where national general prosecutors or constitutional courts reach different conclusions). Forum shopping by criminals and inconsistent internal rules across member states remain real problems. Kövesi urged clarifying EPPO competence in the forthcoming revision of the Regulation to reduce uncertainty and close opportunities for manipulative jurisdictional shifts.

What the EPPO has achieved and what Kövesi wants to be remembered for

As Kövesi’s first term approached its end in 2026, she highlighted three achievements.

First, the EPPO proved its added value: it is an effective EU‑level instrument for investigating and prosecuting transnational organised financial crime.

Second, it exposed and began to dismantle major criminal networks whose activities cross multiple states and endanger public finances and internal security.

Third and perhaps most intangibly important, Kövesi emphasised the spirit of the EPPO team – dedication, professionalism and collegiality across nationalities – as the institution’s greatest asset.

She expressed pride that the EPPO has become stronger and more independent, and she underlined the office’s core mission: to protect EU and national budgets and to tackle the organised criminal groups that undermine EU democracy and security.

Implications for financial crime practitioners and policymakers

Kövesi’s reflections carry practical lessons.

1. Treating VAT and customs fraud as core national security and law enforcement priorities is essential; administrative prevention is necessary but insufficient without criminal enforcement capacity that can operate cross‑border.
2. Investing in data analytics and carefully governed AI tools should be a priority to process the scale of modern evidence and to identify cross‑border networks efficiently.
3. Legal certainty about EPPO competence and about the reviewability of prosecutorial acts is essential to prevent forum shopping, to protect defence rights consistently, and to maintain institutional legitimacy.
4. Sustained funding and political support for cooperation mechanisms among the EPPO, OLAF, Europol, Eurojust and AMLA will determine whether the EU can move from reactive case handling to strategic, preventive disruption of the largest organised criminal networks.

Both realism and an argument for institutional reform underpin Kövesi’s account. The EPPO has shown that a transnational prosecutorial body can work, deliver results and protect public finances, but it also revealed where legal, resource and political frictions persist. Addressing those frictions will determine whether the momentum the EPPO built in its first years can be sustained and scaled up to match the modern, technology‑enabled strategies of organised financial criminals.

Dive deeper

• EUR-Lex ¦ Council Regulation (EU) 2017/1939 EPPO ¦ Link