Kövesi Escalates Greek €2.6 billion Fraud Fight

Laura Codruța Kövesi has chosen a difficult target. On May 22, the EU's chief prosecutor formally told the European Commission that Greece is obstructing her office, and asked it to consider the bloc's budget-conditionality regulation: the mechanism that allows EU funds to be suspended when rule-of-law breaches put European money at risk (EPPO, Adevărul).

The choice of Greece matters. Previous uses of this tool were aimed at governments outside the political family that dominates the EU institutions, the centre-right European People's Party. Greece's ruling New Democracy is inside that family, alongside Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Two Moves, One Target

Kövesi's letter points to two Greek decisions that, in her view, breach the EU Treaty duty of "sincere cooperation" between member states and EU institutions (Digi24).

The first came through parliament. On May 19, Justice Minister Georgios Floridi pushed through an amendment creating fast-track criminal procedures solely for sitting MPs. Investigation periods are cut in half, and trials must begin within three months (Epiloges).

The amendment was folded into an inheritance-law bill, with no consultation with the EPPO, the European Public Prosecutor's Office that investigates crimes against the EU budget. Floridi says the change merely restores a rule that existed between 2014 and 2019 and does not affect EPPO powers.

The second move came from the judiciary. Greece's Supreme Judicial Council renewed the mandates of three Greek EPPO prosecutors for only two years, despite the EPPO's own governing college having set five-year terms in November 2025 (Protothema).

Athens presents both decisions as normal domestic procedure. Kövesi reads them differently: as a pattern of obstruction around live investigations.

Why €2.68 Billion Explains the Friction

The political heat is not abstract. The EPPO has 175 active cases in Greece, involving an estimated €2.68 billion in suspected damage to the EU budget (EPPO).

The largest group of cases concerns OPEKEPE, Greece's agricultural payments agency. Kövesi's office has asked parliament to lift immunity for governing-party MPs linked to alleged subsidy fraud involving fabricated land claims and inflated production figures.

There is a separate EPPO investigation into contracts for two migrant camps, Malakasa and Sintiki. They were awarded without public tender in 2020, at costs far above comparable EU-funded facilities (Le Monde).

Greece is not the only member state to push back against the EPPO. Bulgaria suspended a prosecutor; Slovenia delayed nominations; Romania faced political interference. Greece is the first case where that friction has become a formal conditionality notification.

The Selective Enforcement Test

The conditionality regulation has been used once before, against Hungary, where the EU froze billions in cohesion funds, the money used to reduce economic gaps between richer and poorer regions (CER). Hungary was an easy political target: a government openly hostile to the EU institutions. Greece is a harder test because it sits inside the governing alliance of European centre-right politics.

That pattern has already been visible in the European Parliament. When MEPs adopted their first rule-of-law resolution on Greece in February 2026, the EPP refused to negotiate or support it. The Social Democrats said the EPP backs such resolutions only "in non-EPP governed countries" (S&D Group).

The Commission now has three broad choices: open formal conditionality proceedings, take the softer route of an infringement case, or handle the matter quietly through political diplomacy. With an ally, the instinct in Brussels is often the quiet route.

A pending case before the EU Court of Justice, C-225/24, could make that harder. If the Court decides that conditionality decisions are subject to full judicial review, then a Commission decision to look away from Greece could itself be challenged in Luxembourg (Verfassungsblog).

The EU built this enforcement tool with adversaries in mind. Kövesi has now pointed it at a friend.