Consideraţii privind necesitatea includerii faptelor de spălare de bani și finanțare a terorismului în competența materială a Parchetului European

At the moment, the funds made available to the states through the European programs are subject to large-scale fraud in some member states (Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania), without sufficient means of protection either due to the lack of the appropriate legislative framework, or even due to the lack of interest of the authorities that have powers in this field. At the same time, the internal budgets of the member states register massive losses as the cases of fraud that involve activities carried out in several areas of the European Union increase. Despite the existence of bodies at European level to fight against such frauds such as: OLAF (European Anti-Fraud Office), Eurojust (European Union Agency for Judicial Cooperation in Criminal Matters) and Europol (European Police Office), the results are slow to the desired effects appear implicitly as they do not carry out criminal investigations and therefore there are no criminal prosecutions. As far as OLAF is concerned, this European institution can only forward the results of its administrative investigations to the competent national authorities, who then decide independently whether to initiate criminal prosecution based on OLAF's findings. In these conditions at the European level, it was decided to establish a new entity with investigative powers and with the mission to significantly reduce fraud at the European level in the coming years. The European Public Prosecutor's Office, an indivisible body of the European Union, provided with legal personality, was established in basis of Council Regulation (EU) 2017/1939 and has its headquarters in Luxembourg. With regard to the material competence of the European Public Prosecutor's Office, Article 22 paragraph 1 of the Regulation states that "the EPPO is competent with regard to crimes affecting the financial interests of the Union, which are provided for in Directive (EU) 2017/1371 , as transposed into domestic law, regardless of whether the same criminal behavior could be classified as a different type of crime under national law". A simple analysis of the newly created legislative and institutional framework at the level of the European Union regarding the operationalization of the activities of the European Public Prosecutor's Office does nothing but shed light on the need to find adequate answers for other major problems facing the old continent. We have in mind the examples from the cases investigated so far with reference to the extensive money lau