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Dear Readers, The Group of States against Corruption (GRECO), of which I have been President since 2012, was established in 1999 as the anti-corruption monitoring body of the Council of Europe. The Council of Europe acted as a pioneer when it made fighting corruption one of its priorities for international cooperation nearly 30 years ago. Today, GRECO’s 48-country membership comprises the Council of Europe member states as well as the United States of America and Kazakhstan. Being a member of GRECO is a commitment to the proactive fight against corruption and other forms of misuse of power. Over the years,…

Dear Readers, Recital 5 of Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2020/2092 on a general regime of conditionality for the protection of the Union budget serves as a reminder that the EU’s legal structure is based on the fundamental premise that “each Member State shares with all the other Member States, and recognizes that they share with it, a set of common values on which the Union is founded, as stated in Article 2 TEU.” This commitment to complying with the Treaties, including the fundamental principles of the rule of law, justifies mutual trust between the Member States. Each and every Member State…

This article examines the ongoing reform of the European Union’s anti-corruption mechanism against the backdrop of a large and vulnerable EU budget and persistent shortcomings in protecting the Union’s financial interests. It identifies two core weaknesses of the current framework centred on OLAF: the lack …

The article reflects on the future of financial criminal law investigations of the EU. It departs from the experts’ studies conducted which have developed the Corpus Juris Model, and recalls the historic development of the subsequent institutional debate up to the Lisbon Reform Treaty. The …

The article examines the investigative role of the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) and the procedural rights implications arising from its anti-fraud activities.

The article follows up the efforts undertaken by the EU Commission together with the Council of the European Union to set up the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO). Preparing the EPPO to become operational by 2020 was a top political priority during the Bulgarian Council …

It has been estimated that roughly 1.6 trillion USD in criminal proceeds are laundered through the international financial system each year.1 To put this in perspective, this sum is more than the combined GDPs of Switzerland, Portugal, Romania, Belarus, and Austria in 2011. To enjoy this unnerving amount of illicit assets, criminals are forced to launder these funds through legitimate international financial channels in an attempt to disguise their illegitimate origins. Consequently, if an investigator knows how and where to look, there is always a connection that links a criminal’s assets to his or her crimes – and if sufficient…

On 21 December 2023, the CJEU delivered its first judgment in response to the preliminary reference concerning the extent of judicial review in the context of the EPPO’s cross-border investigations. The questions referred to the CJEU aimed to shed light on two crucial aspects of …

This article seeks to demonstrate the practical challenges of enforcing financial penalties EU-wide. The instrument allowing such enforcement – Council Framework Decision 2005/214/JHA of 24 February 2005 on the application of the principle of mutual recognition to financial penalties – has been transposed in almost …

Money laundering is a major threat to the integrity of the financial system and the stability of the EU’s economy. It is moreover one of the means used to finance terrorism – often through the laundering of small amounts of money. In order to combat it, the EU favours a holistic approach encompassing money laundering and terrorist financing. Hence, the fight against money laundering in the EU relies on the legal framework set by the successive directives, in the wake of the FATF’s recommendations. Money laundering is one of the few criminal offences defined at the EU level. It consists…