Cooperation Agreements and Training on Objectives and New Experiences

ended

The EU anti-fraud program proposed by the Commission for the period 2021-2027 supports cooperation between Member States in order to protect the financial interests of the Union. The projects provide training actions and IT systems for reporting irregularities (whether fraudulent) to the detriment of EU funds. In this sense, the General Prosecutor's Office of the Italian Court of Auditors and the Anti-Fraud Coordination Service (AFCOS) consider that it is particularly important to carry out a joint information and training project within their respective institutional competences. The Court has carried out for a long time an intense anti-fraud activities in the EU funds sector and, in this context, has implemented forms of coordination and collaboration with OLAF by the stipulation of a collaboration protocol in 2006, confirmed by an administrative agreement in 2013. The cooperation between OLAF and the Italian Court of Auditors' prosecutors has been made possible due to the specificities of that judicial organization, distinct from the ordinary one. There was therefore a need for a more in-depth comparison with the financial prosecutor’s offices of Portugal, Spain, France and Greece with regard to the legal and operational instruments aimed at a closer collaboration of all the financial prosecutors in this field, also in relation to a cooperation with OLAF which, present, sees only the Italian Public Prosecutor in charge of a specific collaboration agreement. An additional profile of interest is constituted by the now established institution of the European Public Prosecutor (EPPO) which, both at European and national level, will determine very significant changes in the overall approach to combating criminal fraud, with necessary implications in relations with the accounting offices and with OLAF. The protection of European financial resources would be guaranteed by the improvement of effective procedures for the recovery of fraudulent or unduly received resource