The Savior Prosecutor Myth

As Chief European Prosecutor Laura Kövesi prepares to step down at the end of her term, former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou has surfaced with a familiar refrain: Europe needs more central enforcement power. Disturbed by alleged attempts in Athens to obstruct investigations into the misuse of European funds, Papandreou insists that national sovereignty must not serve as a shield against judicial scrutiny.

The former prime minister's grievance stems from claims of intimidation, political pressure, and diversionary tactics faced by European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) investigators in Greece. In Papandreou's view, the response to evidence of financial misconduct should be full cooperation rather than government-sponsored cover-ups. He argues that judicial independence on paper means little if Brussels agencies are starved of funds, delayed, or politically undermined when their probes touch sensitive nerves.

Where his analysis turns into institutional wishful thinking is in his historical revisionism. Papandreou suggests that had an operational EPPO existed prior to his taking office in 2009, Greece might have avoided its catastrophic fiscal collapse and subsequent international support bailouts. An aggressive European prosecutor, the argument goes, would have exposed previous governmental cover-ups and jolted an otherwise inactive European Commission into action before disaster struck.

This premise assumes that creating another layer of supranational authority automatically guarantees accountability. The machinery in Brussels has rarely demonstrated a swift appetite for confronting systemic misrule until financial arithmetic forces its hand. Expecting an EU agency to act as an infallible broad-spectrum cure for domestic political patronage networks overlooks how quickly bureaucratic bodies themselves succumb to political compromises.

While the call for the next EPPO leadership to resist powerful lobbies and patronage networks sounds principled, it relies on the enduring myth that expanding European institutional reach is the ultimate solution to domestic political dysfunction. Protecting EU funds requires functional judicial mechanisms, but placing faith in an ever-expanding European bureaucracy to police national governments usually yields more administrative friction than genuine reform.

Written by Thomas Nussbaumer thomas.nussbaumer@alpineweekly.com