European Public Prosecutor's Office — Cui Bono?
| Date | 01 March 2013 |
| Published date | 01 March 2013 |
| Author | Eva Szabova,Ladislav Hamran |
| DOI | 10.1177/203228441300400104 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
40 Intersentia
EUROPEAN PUBLIC PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE
– CUI BONO?
L H* and E S**
ABSTRACT
e establishme nt of a European Public Prosecutor’s O ce could be described a s one of
the most topical issues cur rently under discussion in the European Union. e authors
present a comprehensive interpretation of the problem areas most widely discussed in
relation to the establishment of an EPPO. e contribution is divided into two par ts. For
the sake of completeness, the authors provide a description of the events preceding the
enshrinement of this conce pt in the Lisbon Treaty. e second part of the paper is focused
on the main problem areas that need to be resolved not only from a practic al perspective,
but also in order to achieve the greatest possible agreement between the individual
Member Stat es.
Keywords: Article 86 TFEU; Corpus Juris; Eurojust; European Public Prosecutor’s
O ce; mutual lega l cooperation in criminal matter s
INTRODUCTION1
e establishment of a European Public Prosecutor’s O ce (‘EPPO’) could be
described as one of the most topical i ssues under discussion in the European Union,
concept of a European Public Prosec utor at the level of primary EU law.
* L. Hamra n is aprosecutor of the Genera l Prosecution O ce of th e Slovak Republic and National
Member for the Slovak Re public at Eurojust.
** E. Szabova is a doctoral student at the Ins titute of Criminal L aw and Criminology, Facult y of Law,
Trnava University, Trnava, Slova kia.
1 Disclaimer : Presented opinions are exclu sively the opinions of the aut hors and do not represent the
o cial position of the Slov ak Republic or Eurojust concer ning the EPPO.
2 e c onsolidated version of the Treaty on the Fu nctioning of the Europea n Union appeared in the
O cial Journal of the E uropean Union, published und er number C 83/47.
European Publ ic Prosecutor’s O ce – Cui Bono?
New Journal of Eu ropean Crimina l Law, Vol.4, Issue 1–2, 2013 41
Discussions on the need to ex pound on its roles, competences, structu re and other
questions related to its operation, have been going on for much longer, since the mid-
1990s, initiated by the Corpu s Juris project, which provoked a signi cant response and
inspired pr actitioners, academics, a nd the professiona l public to publish many art icles,
studies and analyses on the European Public Prosecutor. A er the signing of the
Lisbon Treaty, discussions on this topic became more intense, and a number of
discussion fora, conferences and workshops were devoted to it.3
In this paper, we will t ry to present a comprehensive interpretation of the problem
areas most widely disc ussed in relation to the establishment of an EPPO. For the sake
of completeness, we believe that an appropriate place to begi n is with a description of
the events preceding the enshrinement of this concept in the Lisbon Treaty. e
second part of the paper wi ll focus on the main problem areas that need to b e resolved
not only from a practical perspe ctive, but also in order to achieve the greatest possible
agreement between the ind ividual Member States.
1. HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
1.1. CORPUS JURIS
Corpus Juris may be characterised as a very schematic model of criminal law and
criminal procedures, which was drawn up exclusively for the area of protecting the
nancial interests of the European Union. Corpus Juris is not the work of EU
institutions; it is t he outcome of numerous investigations a nd studies conducted by a
group of independent experts, academics and practitioners from the Member States
under the leadership of Mireille Del mas-Marty, a professor at the Sorbonne in Paris.
Corpus Juris is therefore not of a binding nature, and all of the provisions (articles)
contained within it are only recommendations, or proposals de lege ferenda directed
towards the creation of a Europea n judicial area and towards secur ing more e ective
cooperation in relation to protecting the nancial interests of the European Union.
Two versions of this study are available – the version orig inally produced in 1997 and
a new, improved version that resulted from a conference held in Florence in 1999.4
Corpus Juris comprises 35 articles arr anged into two main sections, t he substantive
law section (Articles 1–17) and the procedural law section (Articles 18–35). e
substantive law section covers eight elements of a crime5 di rected against the nancial
3 In particu lar, the meeting of the work ing group on the European P ublic Prosecutor’s O ce held in
Madrid in 2009 and the Eurojust strategic semi nar, organised w ith the Belgian Presidency in
September 2010 in Bruges.
4 is version was also c alled the ‘Florence ve rsion of Corpus Juris’, and is a lso known as Corpus Juris
2000.
5 Speci cally, fraud a ecting t he budget of the EU (Article1), market-rigging (Article2), corruption
(active and passive – A rticle3), abuse of o ce (Article4), misappropriation of funds (Article5),
disclosure of secrets pertaining to one’s o ce (Article6), money laundering (Article7), and
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