A prosecutor built at the scale of European crime
The European Public Prosecutor's Office is one of the clearest examples of Europe learning to govern at the scale of the problem. Fraud involving EU grants, procurement, customs or cross-border VAT can move money, companies, evidence and suspects through several countries while national files remain separated by borders. Europe answered by building one independent prosecution office with a central strategy and prosecutors embedded in national justice systems.
That is a major civic achievement. The EPPO is not a coordination forum that can only ask others to act. Within its legal mandate, it can investigate, prosecute and bring cases to judgment. A European Delegated Prosecutor can handle a case in one country and assign a search, seizure or other measure to a colleague in another participating country through the same office. The eventual trial still takes place in a competent national court, preserving judicial review and the procedural rights of suspects and defendants.
One office, central direction and national courtrooms
The architecture joins two levels. The central office in Luxembourg includes the European Chief Prosecutor, the College, European Prosecutors and Permanent Chambers that monitor and direct casework. The decentralised level consists of European Delegated Prosecutors based in participating countries. They are part of the EPPO while using national investigators, powers, procedures and courts. It is European authority designed to work through, rather than replace, the legal capacity of its member states.
Independence is the core design choice. EPPO prosecutors must act in the interests of the Union and may not seek or accept instructions from governments, EU institutions or other outsiders. Permanent Chambers provide cross-national supervision of important decisions such as prosecuting or dismissing a case. National courts review procedural acts, while the Court of Justice retains defined powers to secure consistent EU-law interpretation. That combination makes the office accountable without putting a finance minister or political majority in charge of an investigation.
What the EPPO can—and cannot—investigate
The mandate is precise. The EPPO protects the EU's financial interests: expenditure such as grants, subsidies and procurement; revenue such as customs duties and qualifying serious cross-border VAT fraud; and connected corruption, misappropriation, money laundering or participation in a criminal organisation. For VAT, the legal framework generally requires a cross-border link to at least two member states and total damage of at least €10 million. Ordinary theft, assault, national tax evasion or corruption unrelated to EU money belongs to national authorities.
This focus matters because the EU budget is shared European capacity. It finances research, agriculture, cohesion, recovery, infrastructure and public investment. Stealing from it is not a victimless accounting offence committed far away in Brussels: it diverts common resources and can reward organised networks that exploit the spaces between national systems. Protecting the budget with a genuinely European prosecutor is therefore part of protecting democratic consent for shared action.
The 2025 operational record
The 2025 record shows the scale the institution has uncovered. At year end, the EPPO reported 3,602 active investigations with estimated damage above €67.27 billion, up from 2,666 investigations and €24.8 billion a year earlier. It opened 2,030 investigations during 2025 and filed 275 indictments. These figures show workload and alleged harm under investigation; they are not convictions and should not be added up as money already recovered.
Revenue fraud dominates the value. The EPPO attributed €45.01 billion of the estimated damage in active cases to VAT and customs fraud, more than two thirds of the total. It also reported 981 active revenue-fraud cases and 2,450 expenditure-fraud cases. Twenty-seven percent of all active investigations had a cross-border dimension. Those numbers explain why a prosecutor able to follow one scheme across company registers, warehouses, bank accounts and national jurisdictions is not institutional decoration.
Freezing assets and protecting recovery funds
Asset recovery is another test. In 2025, competent authorities granted freezing orders worth €1.13 billion in EPPO cases, while assets actually frozen during the year were valued at €288.93 million. The distinction matters: an order identifies value that may be secured, while an executed freeze concerns assets found and restrained. Confiscation normally requires later judicial decisions. Europe can be proud of building the capacity while remaining precise about each stage.
Recovery and resilience funding has also become a major field. By the end of 2025, the office was handling 518 active NextGenerationEU cases, 512 of them linked to the Recovery and Resilience Facility. That does not mean the programme as a whole is fraudulent. It means a large, fast and distributed investment programme needs equally capable scrutiny. European solidarity becomes more credible when common money is paired with common enforcement.
How people can report suspected EU fraud
People and companies can report suspected crime affecting EU financial interests directly to the EPPO in any official EU language through its secure form. A reporter needs reasonable grounds, not a completed private investigation, and can submit without supporting evidence when none is available. The EPPO does not accept anonymous reports through that form; national channels may allow anonymity under their law. Deliberately false or malicious reports can have legal consequences, so the route is for facts, documents and honest suspicion rather than political accusation.
From enhanced cooperation to 25 participants
The office began operations on 1 June 2021 after decades of debate and the 2017 EPPO Regulation. It was created through enhanced cooperation because unanimity among all EU countries was unavailable. That route let willing states build a working institution first. Poland and Sweden later joined, and a 2026 Commission decision confirmed Hungary's participation, showing that integration can widen after the machinery proves its value.
As of 21 October 2026, the EPPO lists 25 participating member states. Its membership page notes that Hungary becomes operational after the European Prosecutor is appointed, so 25 participating should not be confused with 25 fully staffed national operations on the review date. Denmark and Ireland remain outside, although Ireland has stated its intention to join and both can cooperate through other legal instruments. This is a powerful European system, not yet a perfectly uniform one.
International reach and national dependencies
International cooperation extends the reach without pretending that EU authority is global. The EPPO reported 28 working arrangements with international partners by the end of 2025. Such arrangements help exchange operational information and organise cooperation, but action in non-participating or non-EU countries still depends on the applicable agreements and local authorities. A single European office reduces internal fragmentation; it does not abolish every external legal boundary.
The model also depends on national capacity. Delegated prosecutors need police, customs, tax, financial-intelligence and judicial support; procedural law and court speed still vary. Detection remains uneven, and the 2025 report explicitly pressed EU institutions and bodies to improve their own reporting. More case numbers can mean better detection as well as more crime. A serious scorecard therefore tracks staffing, referrals, cross-border measures, indictments, judgments, recovery and respect for defence rights—not only headline damage estimates.
Effectiveness with rights and judicial review
EPPO must prove power can be both effective and lawful. Its founding regulation binds it to the Charter, proportionality, data protection, defence rights and judicial review. A prosecutor's allegation is not a verdict, and every defendant remains presumed innocent unless convicted by a competent court. Independence protects investigations from politics; rights and review protect individuals from unchecked prosecution. Europe should be proud of both halves of that design.
A working piece of European public authority
The deeper achievement is constitutional without requiring grand symbolism. Countries entrusted a shared European body with a classic function of public sovereignty, then connected it to national courtrooms and investigators. The result is neither a distant federal police force nor a loose meeting of prosecutors. It is a practical, two-level institution built for a shared budget and a border-crossing economy.
A more federal Europe will need more institutions that match authority to responsibility this clearly. The EPPO's next tests are operationalising new members, sustaining resources as cases grow, improving fraud detection, turning freezing orders into lawful recovery and demonstrating durable courtroom results. But the foundation is already real: Europe built a public prosecutor capable of treating an attack on common money as a common public wrong.