Name: Joint CONT/FISC Exchange of Views with the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) and Eurofisc on “Cooperation in the fight against VAT fraud in the EU”
Uploaded: 2026-06-25T08:45:00+00:00
Duration: 5138 s

00:00 - 00:28

Speaker 1

It's work done in analysis, in reflection, in exchange of view, will be a reasonable work based as usual on evidence and on research. Thank you very much. I think we have a couple of minutes of break to give space and time to the colleague of CONT to join our next joint FISC-CONT session. Thank you.

07:38 - 10:41

Speaker 2

Very good. Colleagues, we continue now with our common hearing of the Committee on Budgetary Control and on the FISC Committee. I'm very happy to sit here together with my colleague Pasquale Tridico. We are both in CONT, so we know about what we are speaking here. We are grateful that you all take the time.

And we are therefore continuing now with the exchange of views with the European Public Prosecutor's Office, EPPO. Laura Kövesi is sitting next to me here, and with the European Fraud Office, OLAF, and Eurofisc on cooperation in the fight against VAT and fraud in the European Union. The European Union is for sure about very positive things as well. It's a very strong success on working together, but unfortunately in everything which is working well, there are also some black spots, and therefore we have to discuss about that today. On behalf of the members of the FISC subcommittee, I warmly welcome our distinguished speakers and members of the CONT committee who are co-organizing this exchange with us.

Cross-border VAT fraud continues to generate substantial losses to the European Union and its member states, with losses from carousel fraud alone estimated at 12.5 billion euros and 30.8 billion annually. Today's discussion will focus on how to reinforce administrative and judicial cooperation between EPPO, OLAF, and Eurofisc to better prevent, detect, and prosecute VAT fraud in the EU and to safeguard a fair and well-functioning single market. Before outlining the practical rules of this exchange, I would like to mention some key issues from the CONT perspective. I appreciate the way this cooperation here has been rapidly organized, and I would like to thank again Pasquale for his availability. As much as VAT is a FISC matter to check and to look at, it's also one of the major resources for our European budget, and the fraud that affects its integrity, that put at risk the integrity of the Union's financial interests, is an increasing source of concern for my colleagues and myself in CONT, and also for Pasquale.

The criminal misconducts that are more and more being detected by the national and the Union's components of the anti-fraud architecture, the AFA, are becoming more complex and more difficult to tackle, both because of their volume and intense occurrence, and because of the still existing suboptimal situations in the countering systems, both at national and Union's level. I'm glad therefore to join Pasquale Tridico in welcoming our guests, the European Chief Prosecutor, I mentioned already, Ms. Marina Marinelić, the chair of Eurofisc, I haven't managed so far, apologies, and last but not least, Mr. Clement, director of OLAF. I will now hand over to Pasquale. Thank you very much, colleagues, for you being here.

10:41 - 11:19

Speaker 1

Thank you. Thank you, Andreas. This cooperation is strengthening the work that all of us, the European Parliament, is doing with the same objective, to recover, to have a sustainable budget, and as well to make sure that rules are followed, in particular as far as VAT is concerned, since this is one of the major source of budget for Europe. Thank you. No, now let's move directly to the, to our speaker, distinguished speaker, starting with Madame Laura Kövesi.

The floor is yours, Laura, for seven minutes.

11:19 - 12:33

Speaker 3

Thank you very much. Honorable members of the European Parliament, dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you for this opportunity to exchange views on the fight against VAT fraud in the EU. The European Public Prosecutor's Office would highly welcome this to become a regular exercise. Last year, I came to ring the alarm bell. VAT fraud in the EU is huge. It is huge because organized crime groups have been allowed to turn it into one of their most profitable industries.

This can no longer be ignored and we need to react. By the end of last year, we had almost 1,000 VAT fraud cases. The total damage under investigation in these cases amounted to more than 45 billion euro. This included VAT fraud linked to customs fraud, which should be of maximum concern for the EU budgetary authority. To me, this is the most pressing question when it comes to protecting the EU budget today.