Stealing from Brussels is considered “patriotic” in parts of the European Union, according to the bloc’s chief public prosecutor.
Whereas stealing tax-payers’ money in one’s own country is frowned upon, siphoning off EU funds is “not a problem because you are a patriot”.
The extraordinary comments revealing the disdain in which Brussels is held in “some Member States” were made by Europe’s chief prosecutor, Laura Codruta Kovesi, who was interviewed by French news agency Agence France Presse, an interview subsequently picked up by Euractiv.
Ms Kovesi, a Romanian who heads the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, said pan-European law enforcement was being undermined by national rivalries and “disdain for the Brussels bureaucracy”.
She told AFP that she had “… heard in some Member States that you have to be ‘patriots’ – and if you steal your national money it’s a problem, but if you steal EU money it’s not a problem because you are a patriot.”
“This is a wrong mentality,” she said, “because in the end your money, our money, is for all the European citizens. And you have to protect all the money for all European citizens.”
The EPPO, which assumed full powers in June 2021, has a team of 114 prosecutors who have already frozen suspect funds worth €359 million euros, it is reported. Its work is however not appreciated everywhere; five EU Member States — Denmark, Sweden, Hungary, Poland and Ireland — have so far refused to send any prosecutors to the pan-EU body.
