The European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) is an independent body that fights against illegal activities affecting the Union’s financial interests. It carries out investigations of an administrative nature, both within the European Union and beyond its borders.
This article outlines the legal framework within which OLAF conducts investigations in non-EU countries on the expenditure side of the EU budget. It describes OLAF’s competence to act outside the EU, as defined in the EU’s legislative framework and mirrored in international agreements. The discussion includes an analysis of the unique tools OLAF has to act, based on the contractual obligations of the economic operator, elements of which were clarified in two recent judgments of the European General Court. In addition, practical aspects of investigations in non-EU countries are highlighted, focussing in particular on pre-accession and European Neighbourhood countries. The article concludes with an outlook on how the OLAF’s particular expertise could further enhance … Read more

In 1993, France appointed the first liaison magistrate in Italy to improve judicial cooperation between the two countries. Since then, various European, American, North African, and Middle Eastern countries have created liaison magistrate posts worldwide, but this tradition does not exist in Sub-Saharan Africa. Such deployments could be particularly useful, however, considering the challenges European countries face as regards judicial cooperation with West and Central African countries in the field of transnational organized crime. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has tackled these challenges by supporting the deployment of two Nigerian prosecutors to Italy and Spain since 2018, in order to strengthen judicial cooperation in the field of human trafficking and smuggling of migrants.
This innovative approach has contributed to shortening the channels of communication between jurisdictions; to better understanding respective legal, institutional, procedural frameworks as well as the nature and type of criminal networks; and to building … Read more

The article deals with the European Public Prosecutor’s Office’s (EPPO’s) specific role in the fight against EU fraud in relation to third countries, i.e. countries outside the EU. It contains an overview of the various legal avenues in the EPPO Regulation that the EPPO may explore for engaging in judicial cooperation with such third countries. It then describes the legal parameters that will mostly affect the application of these various modalities in practice. In its conclusion, the article assumes that it may well prove to be rather challenging for the EPPO to develop its external role and that it is likely to have to deal with a patchwork of forms of judicial cooperation as a result, as this will depend on factors like the nature of the case and the third country involved. Equally, once the EPPO is up and running and in a position to start defining its external … Read more

Mutual assistance in criminal matters between the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) and third States, including Switzerland, is a true challenge. The need for cooperation will exist from the very first days of the EPPO’s existence, but its implementation is a problematic issue: on the one hand, the possibilities offered by the Regulation establishing the EPPO raise questions as regards their compatibility with public international law and the basic rules governing mutual legal assistance. On the other hand, Swiss mutual assistance law is not, as it stands, adapted to enable Swiss authorities to cooperate with the EPPO.

This article discusses the recent developments in the case laws of the European Courts on the principle of ne bis in idem at the interface between criminal and administrative law, in particular with regard to the legitimacy of double-track enforcement systems. It is argued that both, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), have aligned not only in lowering their previously more protective standards, but also in laying down new rules that, though partially converging, remain highly unclear. Through an analysis of the case law following the ECtHR’s judgment in A and B v Norway and the three CJEU 2018 decisions in Menci, Garlsson and Di Puma and Zecca, it is demonstrated that the uncertainty generated as to the precise conditions under which dual criminal and administrative proceedings are permissible leads to unforeseeable outcomes. The potential consequences, most importantly, also … Read more

Strengthening the rule of law – and in particular judicial independence – has been on the EU agenda for several years and it is still a high priority. The situation in Poland and Hungary has confirmed that the measures provided in the Treaties are not sufficient to effectively counteract certain risks or infringements of the rule of law that may occur in the Member States. On May 2018, the Commission presented the Proposal for a Regulation on the protection of the Union’s budget in cases of generalised deficiencies as regards the rule of law in the Member States. In general, the proposed Regulation allows activation of a system to block access to EU funds in order to protect the Union’s financial interests from the risk of financial loss in the event of “generalised deficiencies” as regards the rule of law are detected.

This paper will discuss the justification of … Read more