The EP votes today on my report by which we increase the budget of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office

The European deputy Siegfried Mureșan (PPE / PNL) announced that today, on the last official working day of the European Parliament in the current mandate, the plenary session of the Parliament will vote on its budget rectification report which increases the allocations to the European Prosecutor’s Office by 3.6 million euros (EPPO).

“As the European Parliament’s chief negotiator on the European Union budget for 2024, I have insisted on increasing the EPPO budget since the beginning of the budget negotiations. The reasons why we need this increase are as clear as can be.

First of all, the EU member states have at their disposal, during this period, a record total amount of more than 2,000 billion euros for investments and reforms through the European Recovery and Resilience Mechanism and the EU Multiannual Budget. Since the investments from European funds are more than ever before in the history of the EU, the efforts to combat fraud with European funds must also be greater than ever”, says Mureșean.

“Kövesi must have sufficient resources for investigations”

The MEP says that “we need to make sure that the European Chief Prosecutor, Laura-Codruța Kövesi, and her team have enough resources to complete their investigations and to protect European funds, i.e. people’s money, from the risks of fraud” .

“That’s why, in the negotiations regarding the European Union Budget for 2024, we managed to increase the allocations for the EPPO by 4 million euros”, claims Siegfried Mureșan.

He also says that the need to increase the EPPO budget is even greater now, with the accession of Poland to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, which will soon be followed by the accession of Sweden.

“Through these two accessions, the EPPO will act in 24 of the 27 EU member states. That is precisely why we will adopt this budget amendment as a priority today, which increases the allocations for the EPPO this year by another 3.6 million euros.

At the same time, the resources that the European Public Prosecutor’s Office needs will continue to grow in the next period, the more we accelerate the absorption of European funds. That’s why I asked the European Commission, in the report that the European Parliament will vote on today, to soon propose a new increase in the EPPO budget, on the occasion of a future budget correction”, concludes Mureșan.