EUU, Alm.del - 2024-25 - Bilag 583: Henvendelse af 26/6-25 fra European Public Prosecutor Office (EPPO) med invitation til besøg

Europaudvalget 2024-25
EUU Alm.del Bilag 583
Offentligt

26 juin 2025

Briefing note

How is the European Public Prosecutor Office beneficial for a non-participating Member State?

The EPPO is a transnational prosecution office covering 24 EU Member States. There are three non-

participating Member States (Denmark, Ireland and Hungary) with whom EPPO cooperates as if it

were a prosecution office of another Member State, via the EU / international judicial cooperation

instruments.

The EPPO is in charge of investigating and bringing to national courts cases of fraud affecting the EU

financial interests. This covers EU expenditure (funds and administrative expenses) and revenue

(customs

–

antidumping, VAT).

The EPPO has a legal framework enabling unprecedently efficient cross-border investigations and

prosecutions. What takes weeks and months in traditional judicial cooperation, takes hours and

days inside the EPPO-zone. Moreover, through swift access to information in participating Member

States, the EPPO gains an unprecedented overview of cross-border fraudulent chains. This is

particularly relevant in customs and VAT fraud (notably carousel fraud), which is very profitable to

organised crime (both from inside and outside the EU). In addition, the EPPO is specialised

in economic and financial crime.

So how is the EPPO beneficial to a non-participating Member State?

Denmark benefits from the existence of EPPO from four main perspectives

–

budget, security,

protection of Danish industry from unfair external competition and, in general, protection of rule of

law in the EU.

From a budget perspective, this is linked to how the EU is financed. Member States decide ceilings

of EU expenditure in the Multi-Annual Financial Framework. The EU revenue comes from customs

duties (collected by Member States and passed on to the EU, with deduction of a flat fee), VAT

revenue (statistically calculated from Member States’ VAT receipts) and Member States

contribution based on GNI.

As the EPPO fights customs fraud and VAT fraud, that means that it reduces criminality in this area

and recovers assets. Less customs and VAT fraud means more revenue from customs and VAT.

Ultimately, this means more national revenue (VAT) as well as a decrease in GNI contributions to

the EU budget.

Moreover, when it comes to expenditure fraud, the EPPO investigations are the basis for the

recovery of illegally spent amounts to the EU budget.

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EUU, Alm.del - 2024-25 - Bilag 583: Henvendelse af 26/6-25 fra European Public Prosecutor Office (EPPO) med invitation til besøg

Finally, to be noted that Denmark, as a non-participating Member State, does not contribute to the

financing of EPPO.

From a security perspective, given the most dangerous criminal organizations’ heavy involvement

in defrauding the EU budget (in particular on the revenue side) the EPPO is in the first line of the

fight against organised crime in the EU.

As organised crime groups are involved in more crime areas, by gathering huge volumes of evidence

in its investigations and sharing the elements falling outside the scope of its competence (such as

drugs, trafficking in weapons, etc.) with the relevant national authorities, the EPPO also directly

contributes to their fight against organised crime groups.

The EPPO also protects EU manufacturers from unfair competition from abroad. Taking advantage

of the EU’s weak enforcement of customs

and anti-dumping duties, companies from third countries

end up paying much less customs duties than they should. There is no official estimate of the

“customs gap” but all indications point to many billions EUR per year. When they commit customs

fraud, third country operators also commit VAT fraud (by undervaluing the goods or through

carousel fraud). This is also into many billion EUR per year (total VAT gap resulting from fraud

estimated at 50 billion EUR per year by Europol).

Take e-bikes. There have been several EPPO cases where Chinese e-bikes are declared as being

produced in another country with lower duties. Or they are imported as “e-bike parts” which have

lower duties than complete e-bikes. European e-bike manufacturers are therefore suffering from

unfair competition.

Finally, as an independent prosecution office, the EPPO strengthens the rule of law in the EU, by

investigating corruption involving EU funds, including cases of high-level corruption and bribery.

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