We had support of different stakeholders in some cases, but when I say that I’m concerned that EPPO is going to be killed softly for doing its job, I have three main reasons. It’s easy, it’s a pattern. If you want to destroy an institution, you can do three things, that are happening now. First, you are underfunded. On paper we should have 230 European delegated prosecutors, and we have money only for 180. We have money for only one third of what security service costs, and I would have endless examples.

Second, a lot of delays. Since 2021, we said that the revision of the EPPO regulation has to start earlier. It’s delayed. Thirdly, I have learned that here everything is complicated — and I thought that Romania is complicated. To give you an example, there are these endless discussions about anti-fraud architecture. We discovered a new continent of crime, and we see the criminal organizations are growing, defrauding the EU budget and national budgets. In the middle of this, should be the fight against organized criminality. Instead, we have endless discussion about how to complicate the life of the prosecutors, and we discuss a lot about this joint intake registry. If there is money to have this new registry electronically, how is it possible that money doesn’t exist for what we really need?

Do you feel that you have managed to shake things up? Have people or institutions started behaving differently?

A lot of changes happened due to the EPPO. The level of detection increased in most of the member states, the level of successful cases increased, and obviously the protection of the EU budget is higher with the EPPO. But still, there are things that are not working the way they should be.

If you had the chance to do it all over again, what is the main thing that you would do differently?

Nothing. I would do the same things, but maybe the others should change their behavior. I thought that there is a big difference between Brussels and what I saw in Romania. But in Romania, or other member states, people are used to work with prosecutors, they know what the prosecutors are doing.