European Chief Prosecutor: “There Are NO Clean Countries!”

The European Chief Prosecutor, Laura Codruța Kövesi, offered an interview to Faces of Democracy. The first-ever European Chief Prosecutor, head of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, made a rather controversial statement:

Before starting our operations, we did a survey among the participating EU Member States about the number of investigations within our scope of competence they have conducted in the last 4 years. In some countries, there are hundreds, even thousands. In other countries, there are close to none. That makes me wonder about the priority given to this fight. Because I know that there are no clean countries.

Laura Codruța Kövesi for Faces of Democracy

Before being appointed to the EPPO – European Public Prosecutor’s Office, Laura Codruța Kövesi was the head of the Romanian National Anticorruption Directorate – DNA. Her position there brought her to the attention of the general public on seldom occasions and there were lots of situations that brought controversy over the cases instrumented by the DNA.

On the one hand, the perception of the corruption level in Romania was one of the highest in the EU. The European officials and the international partners of Romania mentioned the corruption level whenever they had the opportunity for justifying unpopular decisions for the country.

The joining of the Schengen space is only one of the situations of this kind. Even though Romania had accomplished the technical conditions back in 2010, the European members, such as France or The Netherlands, opposed the admission of Romania justifying their position by the level of corruption in the country.

Anyway, as the Chief Prosecutor said and as the statistics confirm, yes, there is no clean country. Corruption is everywhere, despite its level. But the statement will certainly roll out in the European press with a slightly different meaning, especially when it comes from a Romanian-born European official.

 At the moment, not all countries participate in the EPPO. And this is not compulsory for the EU member states. Namely, Denmark, Ireland, Hungary, Poland, and Sweden do not participate in the EPPO and therefore, the European Chief Prosecutor has no right to investigate any crime related to the European funds. Undoubtedly, this situation will certainly change in the future.