Kövesi puts Greek €2.6 billion in play

Laura Codruța Kövesi, the EU's chief prosecutor, formally told the European Commission on May 22 that Greece is obstructing her office, invoking the bloc's budget-conditionality regulation for the first time against a government politically aligned with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (EPPO, Adevărul). The regulation allows EU funds to be suspended when rule-of-law failures threaten the EU budget. Until now, it had been used against governments outside the orbit of the centre-right European People's Party, the family that dominates the EU institutions. Greece's ruling New Democracy belongs to that same EPP family.

Two moves, one target

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

The first is legislative. Justice Minister Georgios Floridi pushed an amendment through parliament on May 19 creating fast-track criminal procedures only for sitting MPs. Investigation deadlines are cut by half, and trials must start within three months (Epiloges). The provision was inserted into an inheritance-law bill, without consultation with the EPPO, the European Public Prosecutor's Office that investigates crimes affecting the EU budget. Floridi said the amendment simply restores a measure that existed between 2014 and 2019 and does not change the EPPO's powers.

The second is judicial. 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 ordinary domestic procedure. Kövesi is treating them as part of the same obstruction problem.

Why €2.68 billion explains the friction

The confrontation is tied directly to live investigations. 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 concerns OPEKEPE, Greece's agricultural payments agency. The office has asked parliament to lift immunity for governing-party MPs linked to alleged subsidy fraud involving fabricated land claims and inflated production data.

The EPPO is also investigating contracts for two migrant camps, Malakasa and Sintiki, awarded without public tender in 2020 at costs far above comparable EU-funded facilities (Le Monde).

Greece is not the only member state to resist the EPPO. Bulgaria suspended a prosecutor, Slovenia delayed nominations, and Romania faced political interference. Greece, however, is the first case where the dispute has escalated into a formal conditionality notification.

The selective enforcement test

The conditionality regulation has been activated once before, against Hungary, where the EU froze billions in cohesion funds, the development money used to reduce economic gaps between regions and member states (CER). Hungary was an easy political target: a government openly hostile to Brussels. Greece is more awkward, because it sits inside the EPP alliance that controls the Commission.

That pattern has already shown itself in parliament. When MEPs adopted their first rule-of-law resolution on Greece in February 2026, the EPP refused to negotiate or vote for it. The Social Democrats said the EPP supports such resolutions only "in non-EPP governed countries" (S&D Group).

The Commission now has three routes: open formal conditionality proceedings, choose the softer path of an infringement case, or handle the matter through quiet diplomacy. With a political ally, Brussels usually reaches first for the third. A pending case before the EU Court of Justice, C-225/24, could limit that discretion. If the Court rules that conditionality decisions are subject to full judicial review, a Commission decision to look away from Greece could itself be challenged in Luxembourg (Verfassungsblog).

For smaller member states, Malta included, the question is familiar: whether EU rule-of-law tools apply according to law or according to political family. Kövesi has now forced the Commission to answer that question inside its own camp.