Author: Alejandro Hernández López
Committee: Academic Committee
Date: 28/09/2026
The Commission has published the supporting study ‘Evaluation of the implementation and impact of Regulation (EU) 2017/1939 of 12 October 2017 on the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), and of the effectiveness and efficiency of the EPPO and its working practices’ [Access to the full text here]. The study primarily covers the period from the entry into force of the Regulation to June 2025 and clearly synthesizes the main issues relating to the implementation, effectiveness, and efficiency of the body.
Operational Effectiveness and Caseload Growth
The volume of the EPPO’s casework has massively expanded, far exceeding the estimates of the initial 2017 Impact Assessment. Between the start of operations on 1 June 2021 and June 2025, active investigations rose from 576 to 3,602 encompassing an estimated total damage of 67.27 billion euros. Indictments grew from 5 to 275, while convictions increased from 1 to 159. In quantitative terms, Italy is the Member State with the highest figures for this period.
By the end of 2025, 27% of the EPPO’s active investigations involved a cross-border dimension, confirming its capacity to tackle transnational criminality. The EPPO has successfully investigated particularly large-scale VAT carousel fraud schemes —such as Operations Admiral and Moby Dick— that were previously undetected by fragmented national investigations. In fact, cases involving PIF crime-focused criminal organizations increased substantially from 30 in 2021 to 529 in 2025.
National Implementation and Coherence Challenges
Despite direct applicability, it is well known that the EPPOReg relies heavily on national criminal frameworks, leading to uneven implementation across the 24 participating Member States. The study now presented by the Commission points out the main issues identified to date in this area:
– Judicial Independence [Articles 4 and 6 EPPOReg]: In several Member States, investigative judges or inquiring magistrates retain powers to lead investigations, limiting the EDPs control and weakening the EPPO’s intended independence.
– Competence Conflicts [Articles 25(6) and 42(2)(c) EPPOReg]: The majority of Member States fail to comply with requirements for resolving competence disputes between national authorities and the EPPO. Often, national Prosecutor Generals are designated to settle these conflicts without judicial review or the ability to make preliminary references to the CJEU. In this regard, it should be noted that the Croatian Constitutional Court has recently referred a preliminary ruling request to the Luxembourg Court, seeking to determine whether the expression ‘the national authorities competent to confer jurisdiction to bring criminal proceedings at national level’, used in Article 25(6) of Regulation 2017/1939, is to be understood as meaning that those national authorities must be included within the autonomous concept of ‘court or tribunal’ within the meaning of Article 267 TFEU (Cfr. C-506/25, Raukar-Gamulin and others).
– Reporting Obligations [Article 24]: Many national laws still require criminal conduct to be reported to a national authority first rather than directly to the EPPO, creating bottlenecks and delays.
– Material Competence Limitations: Divergent interpretations of the “focus” of criminal activity and rules regarding “inextricably linked offences” cause friction. The exclusion of national direct tax offences from the EPPO’s competence has been also identified as a factor that prevents reporting and contributes to missed investigative opportunities.
– Differences regarding the procedural safeguards of investigated and accused persons: despite the efforts made by the EU to harmonize the procedural safeguards for investigated and accused persons through the Stockholm Programme directives, the reality is that significant differences exist depending on the legal frameworks of each Member State. These differences can be seen in EPPO proceedings and affect key aspects of the right of defence, such as access to legal aid or access to information. Furthermore, there are inconsistencies regarding the judicial review of the acts of the EPPO and access to legal remedies, as has been recently sustained after the CJEU judgment in Case C-292/23.
Efficiency and Resource Allocation
The EPPO has delivered clear efficiency improvements, particularly by centralizing intake and linking cross-jurisdictional information through its Case Management System (CMS). However, the Office operates under severe resource pressures due to the unexpected scale of its operations.
The initial 2017 Legislative Financial Statement assumed the EPPO would reach a “cruising speed” of approximately 970 active cases per year. The reality of 3,602 active cases by the end of 2025 required significant budget adjustments. In this regard, the EPPO’s committed budget grew from 34.5 million euros in 2021 to 85.9 million euros in 2025, while central statutory staff more than doubled. According to the most recent figures (December 2025), The number of EPPO staff were 299 and the number of EDPs 182 across the 24 participating Member States. The EDPs were supported by 178.5 National EDP Assistants.
Despite this growth, the study shows that the EPPO continues to experience administrative understaffing and reliance on uneven national operational backing, including a lack of access to dedicated investigators and national databases.
Inter-Agency and International Cooperation
The EPPO’s mandate intersects with other EU actors and international jurisdictions, necessitating complex cooperation frameworks that do not always function seamlessly. OLAF, Europol and Eurojust operate on the basis of clearly defined and complementary roles, but the study shows that some gaps persist, especially in relation to information sharing. While OLAF is the largest source of case referrals among EU bodies, cooperation is hindered by a complex legal framework and differing scopes (administrative vs. criminal). The current “hit/no-hit” system seems to be outdated and lacks automation, which occasionally leads to duplicated investigations. In this regard, the respective proposals to reform the regulations of these agencies recently published by the Commission will provide an opportunity to mitigate these dysfunctions and ensure better cooperation with the EPPO.
Precisely, the cooperation with the Commission is perceived as well-structured, but Spending Directorates-General report friction regarding definitions of financial “damage,” delays in official notifications, and cumbersome secure communication tools. The amended Cooperation Agreement is expected to improve this by granting the EPPO direct access to more databases such as the ARACHNE database.
As for the Non-Participating Member States and Third Countries, cooperation remains fragmented due to the lack of a uniform legal framework recognizing the EPPO as a competent judicial authority. While Working Arrangements with all the non-participating Member States exist, practical limits like the non-recognition of European Arrest Warrants remain. At the same time, a network of non-binding agreements with Third Countries have partially bridged some of these gaps.
Relevance and EU Added Value
The EPPO has already completed its first five years of operational activity and remains highly relevant to the current and future EU’s needs. The EPPO’s ability to provide central oversight, bypass purely national investigations and traditional MLA requests, and direct simultaneous cross-border actions, including the use of a sui generis mechanism in cross-border investigations (partially clarified by the CJEU in its judgment in Case C-292/23), has proved to be a real added value that cannot be replicated at the national level. The original rationale behind the establishment of this body —that Member States acting independently cannot achieve the coordination required to protect the Union budget— has been validated in practice by the EPPO’s success in these years handling complex, and often multi-jurisdictional crimes falling under his current material scope of application. Nonetheless, in order to continue the story of success of this European body, any potential and imminent reforms proposed to the EPPOReg will likely aim to resolve the main issues identified in this report.