Laura Codruţa Kovesi, the head of European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO), and the 22 EU prosecutors of the EPPO took their oath of office in a ceremony at the European Court of Justice on September 28.

The EPPO is the EU body tasked with investigating and prosecuting fraud and other crimes affecting the EU's financial interests.

The 22 European prosecutors are Frédéric Baab (France), Cătălin-Laurențiu Borcoman (Romania), Jaka Brezigar (Slovenia), Danilo Ceccarelli (Italy), Gatis Doniks (Latvia), Yvonne Farrugia (Malta), Teodora Georgieva (Bulgaria), Daniëlle Goudriaan (The Netherlands), José Eduardo Guerra (Portugal), Petr Klement (Czechia), Tomas Krušna (Lithuania), Tamara Laptoš (Croatia), Katerina Loizou (Cyprus), Ingrid Maschl-Clausen (Austria), Juraj Novocký (Slovakia), Andrés Ritter (Germany), Maria Concepción Sabadell Carnicero (Spain), Gabriel Seixas (Luxemburg), Kristel Siitam-Nyiri (Estonia), Harri Tiesmaa (Finland), Yves Van Den Berge (Belgium) and Dimitrios Zimianitis (Greece).

"The European Public Prosecutor's Office is independent. This is a fundamental principle of the rule of law: only an independent judiciary can enforce the law equally for everybody. The public concerns related to financial fraud, corruption, and the rule of law have grown stronger than ever. By protecting the European Union's budget, we will play an essential role in making the European citizens' trust in the Union stronger than ever," Kovesi said at the event.

Mireille Delmas-Marty, a French jurist and emeritus professor at Collège de France who coordinated the expert committee for creating the EPPO, and Matthew Caruana Galizia, the son of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was murdered in Malta in 2017, attended the ceremony.

Kovesi, the former head of Romania's Anticorruption Directorate (DNA), was appointed European Chief Prosecutor by the Council and the European Parliament in October 2019. She submitted her bid for the position in December 2018. The Romanian Government of the time, made up of a PSD-ALDE coalition, did not support her and even lobbied against her appointment.

(Photo: Octav Ganea/ Inquam Photos)

simona@romania-insider.com