On the Protection of the Union’s financial interests in the post-2027 multiannual financial framework through the revision of the anti-fraud architecture

–having regard to the report of the Committee on Budgetary Control (A10-0000/2026),

A.whereas effective protection of the Union's budget against fraud is an obligation under Articles 310(6) and 325 TFEU, encompassing prevention, detection, investigation, prosecution and recovery, on both the expenditure and the revenue side;

B.whereas the PIF Directive defines the criminal offences of the Anti-Fraud Architecture (AFA), including fraud, corruption, misappropriation and money laundering of PIF-related proceeds;

C.whereas the Commission White Paper COM(2025)0546 identifies the following reform areas: strengthened prevention, improved detection, reinforced investigation and prosecution, more effective recovery, and better governance; whereas this Resolution endorses and sets out Parliament’s priorities for the forthcoming legislative proposals and instruments to follow;

D.whereas the Resolution of 6 May 2025 called for measurable and results-oriented AFA governance, accelerated digitalisation, a centralised governance structure, improved reporting and bigger focus on recovery and remedial measures; whereas this Resolution set outs those calls in the context of the forthcoming revision of each AFA component’s founding regulation or directive;

I. Scope and objectives of the AFA

1.Affirms that the AFA exists to protect the integrity of the Union budget across the full anti-fraud life-cycle - prevention, detection, investigation, prosecution and recovery - on both the expenditure and revenue sides;

2.Underlines that the protection of the Union’s financial interests, as defined by the PIF Directive should remain the common basis of the AFA; clarifies that, where AFA components such as Europol, Eurojust and AMLA hold wider mandates under their respective founding instruments, their participation and role in the AFA and all obligations relates exclusively to their PIF-relevant functions; maintains that any extension of EPPO or OLAF mandates to organised crime generically requires an unanimous European Council decision with Parliament’s consent, or a separate legislative act; rejects any attempt to achieve such extension through administrative practice or organisational redesign;

3.Urges the Commission to address the governance deficit identified by ECA Special Report 26/2025 and repeatedly stressed by Parliament: the absence of system-level accountability, the lack of measurable outcomes, and the missing overview of individual components' strategies and priorities; stresses that recovery is the final tangible evidence of the AFA's effectiveness; reiterates that the AFA’s outcome is expected to be bigger than the sum of its components’;

II. Foundational principles of the AFA

4.Maintains that no AFA component shall receive instructions from any political authority regarding the opening, conduct, or closure of an individual investigation; underlines that this foundational principle of independence is essential and must be safeguarded for all AFA components;

5.Considers that AFA independence comprises two dimensions: (A) operational and investigative independence, which must be safeguarded, where investigative confidentiality is a corollary protecting proceedings from interference and political exploitation; and (B) administrative and institutional independence, including adequate resources and staffing, which should be ensured within the applicable governance and budgetary frameworks, in a manner that supports the effective exercise of the respective mandates;

6.Clarifies that non-investigative functions -including intake and routing of information, recovery monitoring, policy coordination, and inter-institutional reporting- are not covered by the operational independence principle; calls on the Commission to make the functional distinction of OLAF investigative and non-investigative tasks explicit in the revised OLAF Regulation;

7.Considers that coordination between AFA components is essential to protecting the Union’s financial interests and should be ensured; underlines that operational independence does not preclude any component from: (A) timely exchanging relevant information with other components, (B) ensuring appropriate referral and cooperation between competent authorities, including the simultaneous notification of competent components in the intake and routing process, (C) facilitating coordination between administrative and criminal investigations; (D) contributing with structured data to the Consolidated AFA Annual Report; calls for appropriate mechanisms to facilitate such coordination;

8.Stresses that independence does not entail opacity; calls for aggregate reporting by AFA components to the budgetary authority, on case volumes, outcomes, recovery results and follow-up rates, while respecting applicable confidentiality and data protection rules and without identifying individual cases or disclosing investigative content; considers that an adequate level of transparency is essential to an effective accountability;

9.Recognises non-prejudice to on-going investigations as important safeguard for effective coordination, information-sharing and accountability within the AFA; underlines that the timing and scope of information-sharing and other actions should be managed in a manner that protects ongoing investigations; while ensuring that this principle does not prevent competent authorities from taking appropriate measures to protect the Union budget;

10.Calls on the Commission, when revising the legislative instruments governing an AFA components, to assess the need for an explicit definition of non-prejudice and appropriate procedural mechanisms for invoking and managing deferrals and to consider appropriate safeguards to ensure that non-prejudice is not used to withhold information necessary for another component to assess budget-protective precautionary measures or to prevent appropriate simultaneous notification;

III. Coordination and information-sharing within the AFA

11.Notes that the current arrangements for receiving and handling information relevant to the AFA causes delays in the assessment and referral of potential PIF cases, gaps in the timely consideration of budget-protection measures, and duplication or coordination difficulties where relevant information is received by different components through separate channels; stresses the need to strengthen the timely sharing, assessment and appropriate routing of such information between the relevant AFA components;

12.Calls on the Commission, as part of the AFA revision, to assess the feasibility and added value of establishing a common intake mechanism, in the form of a Joint Intake AFA Register, applicable across the relevant AFA components, with a view to ensuring the timely receipt, assessment and appropriate routing of relevant information to the competent AFA components, while avoiding unnecessary delays and lengthy discretionary processes;

13.Considers that a common intake mechanism should facilitate the timely and coordinated initial assessment of relevant information and, where appropriate, enable its parallel notification to the competent AFA components, allowing EPPO and OLAF to assess the information independently and within their respective mandates, without one assessment prejudging or preventing the other's assessment;

14.Underlines that the Intake Register and its function should be administrative, and not investigative; calls on the Commission to explore, in consultation with EPPO and OLAF, appropriate institutional and operational options for a joint and coordinated intake function within the existing AFA architecture, including arrangements allowing of EPPO and OLAF to contribute jointly to the initial handling of relevant information; emphasises such a function should not determine competence, conduct investigations or issue recommendations, and should facilitate the timely and coordinated assessment and appropriate notification of relevant information to competent AFA components, in accordance with their respective mandates and without prejudice to their operational independence, with a view to addressing gaps in the current anti-fraud architecture;

15.Recalls the role and responsibilities of EPPO in investigating and prosecuting PIF offences within its competence; underlines that arrangements for the intake and routing of information should not prevent EPPO from carrying out its own assessment of information relevant to its mandate without undue delay; clarifies that, simultaneous notification to EPPO and OLAF is intended to facilitate their respective assessments and does not affect their respective mandates or EPPO's competence under the applicable legal framework;

16.Calls for the establishment of a single, secure digital reporting channel for information relevant to the AFA, enabling its automatic receipt, recording and appropriate routing to the competent AFA components, with standardised procedures and appropriate safeguards for whistleblower protection from first submission; calls on the Commission to ensure that relevant information received through this channel can be securely recorded and shared between the competent AFA components, in accordance with their respective mandates and confidentiality requirements;

17.Considers that systematic identification of connections between cases, persons, operations and networks would benefit from improved interoperability and secure information-sharing between AFA components, including through the use of common entity identifiers and appropriate query mechanisms, building where relevant on existing tools and practices such as Eurofisc’s Transaction Network Analysis; stresses that any such arrangements should be limited to what is necessary for identifying relevant connections and should respect applicable confidentiality and data protection requirements;

IV. EPPO-OLAF cooperation: the graduated suspension rule

18.Recalls that the Commission's 2011 Communication on criminal law and administrative investigations recognised criminal and administrative investigations as complementary instruments for the protection of the Union’s financial interests; notes that the current framework governing parallel administrative investigations following the involvement of EPPO limits the ability of administrative authorities to take complementary measures to protect the Union budget;

19.Notes that the current legal framework provides for different forms of interaction between EPPO and OLAF that should be clearly distinguished and appropriately reflected in the forthcoming revisions of the relevant legal frameworks, including: (i) OLAF investigations carried out in support of EPPO at EPPO's request, where OLAF may decline to provide such support on stated grounds; (ii) OLAF complementary investigations initiated on OLAF's own initiative, subject to EPPO’s right to object, currently governed by working arrangement; and (iii) the transfer of cases from EPPO to OLAF following a decision not to open or to dismiss a case;

20.Considers that the ne bis in idem rationale (“not twice for the same principle”) invoked by the Court of Justice in relation to the prohibition of parallel investigations -in particular the distinction between punitive and non-punitive administrative measures- and is therefore over-inclusive; considers further that the two legitimate operational concerns -evidence integrity and procedural rights protection- are time-limited and case-specific and justify a graduated, time-bound suspension of OLAF's formal investigative measures, rather than a permanent prohibition;

21.Calls on the Commission to replace the current prohibition with a view to establishing a graduated and time-bound framework for interaction between EPPO investigations and OLAF investigative measures, providing for appropriate arrangements on the suspension and the reactivation of OLAF’s investigative capacity, while ensuring that necessary budget-protective measures remain possible throughout, subject to the non-prejudice principle; calls for such a framework to address, in particular, simultaneous notification, complementary investigations and the respective roles and responsibilities of EPPO and OLAF;

22.Calls on the Commission to reflect this graduated suspension framework in the revised EPPO and OLAF Regulations, and to clarify in its proposals that: necessary non-punitive budget-protective measures should remain possible throughout the different stages; punitive administrative sanctions should not be imposed in parallel with criminal proceedings or circumstances giving rise to concerns of double punishment for the same persons and facts: and, where EPPO's investigation is closed without indictment, OLAF should be able to open or continue an administrative investigation within its mandate;

23.Is concerned that information from EPPO relevant to enabling budget-protective measures reaches the Commission and OLAF only at or near indictment, potentially limiting the scope for timely precautionary action; calls on the Commission to ensure that OLAF receives timely information on cases within EPPO investigation that it is necessary to assess appropriate budget-protection measures, while respecting applicable confidentiality requirements and without prejudice to EPPO’s investigative independence; reiterates that the availability of the appropriate administrative budget-protective measures should not be unduly restricted by the non-prejudice principle and calls on the Commission to ensure that the revised legal framework do not unnecessarily restrict such measures beyond what is required to protect ongoing investigations;

24.Calls on EPPO and OLAF to establish, as an interim measure, a joint operational protocol formalising notification procedure, applicable deadlines, categories of information shareable at each phase, and the escalation mechanism for disputes;

V. Prevention, detection and AFA Intelligence

25.Recalls that effective protection of the Union's financial interests requires action across the full anti-fraud cycle and that prevention and early detection are among its most cost-effective stages; underlines that responsibility for prevention and first-line detection rests primarily with Member States, and that the role of AFA components is to support, reinforce and where necessary complement national systems;

26.Observes that prevention and detection operate through diverse modalities, including: (i) structural fraud-risk prevention, ex ante conditionality, procurement rules and financial management requirements; and (ii) real-time and near-real-time detection through data-driven tools, including Arachne+, IMS, EDES and Eurofisc’s Transaction Network Analysis; calls on the Commission to ensure the availability, standardisation and interoperability of information of all recipients of Union funds across all management modes, and to strengthen, in the context of the 2028–2034 MFF sectoral regulations, transparency and publication requirements for recipients, including contractors and subcontractors, with a view to improving fraud detection a public accountability;

27.Stresses that complaint - and intelligence-triggered detection - depends on two structural conditions: first, that persons who report suspected fraud to AFA components are effectively protected against retaliation from the first submission; second, that information on recipients of Union funds is sufficiently standardised and accessible to facilitate scrutiny; reiterates, therefore, its call on the Commission to take action, including infringement proceedings where necessary, in case of fail of implementation of whistleblower protection Directive (EU) 2019/1937, recalls the important role of whistleblowers and investigative journalists in bringing suspected complex fraud to light;

28.Calls on all Member States that have not yet done so to adopt a comprehensive National Anti-Fraud Strategy (NAFS); calls on the Commission to promote and incentivise the adoption and regular updating of NAFSs;

29.Considers that the AFA requires, in addition to operational components, a dedicated intelligence and strategic analysis layer producing aggregated threat assessments, fraud typologies, risk indicators and pattern intelligence; notes that Eurofisc, the AMLA/FIU network and AFIS fulfil this function without a legally formalised coordination mechanism; calls on the Commission to strengthen coordination within this layer, including appropriate mechanisms for sharing strategic intelligence relevant to PIF offences;

30.Calls on the Commission to establish a common AI governance framework for AFA tools, comprising mandatory human oversight of AI-generated alerts before investigative or administrative consequences follow, explainability requirements, bias auditing, alignment with the AI Act for high-risk systems, and automatic event-logging for retrospective audit;

VI. Member State Partnership and the external cooperation

31.Maintains that Member States share responsibility to counter fraud at all stages, and that the AFA’s relationship with Member States must be framed as a structured partnership, not supervision; recalls that strengthening AFCOS is important to enhance national anti-fraud capacity and cooperation with the relevant the AFA components;

32.Notes that EU funds are increasingly implemented in or through third countries; calls on the Commission to ensure that appropriate anti-fraud safeguards, including effective access to information and cooperation for relevant AFA components are incorporated into external funding instruments; calls for effective cooperation with EPPO to further developed with candidate countries in the context of accession negotiations;

VII. Recovery, enforcement and financial follow-up

33.Affirms that recovery of funds lost to fraud or irregularity is a key measure of AFA's effectiveness and should be assessed against the amounts recovered relative to the amounts at risk; stresses that recovery outcomes must be considered alongside other indicators of effectiveness, including prevention, detection, investigations and prosecutions, rather than relying on process indicators alone, such as the number of investigations opened or indictments issued;

34.Calls on the Commission to strengthen the centralised recovery monitoring and reporting of the follow-up and recovery of amounts identified following the OLAF financial recommendations and judicial decisions where an EPPO indictment has resulted in a national court judgment with financial consequences for the Union budget; calls for regular reporting to the budgetary authority on amounts identified, recovered, written off and time elapsed between identification and recovery, analysing the reasons for success and failure in recovery, identifying patterns and trends; calls for appropriate and disaggregated data on recovery rates at Member State and programme level;

35.Calls for the application of a comply-or-explain principle to all OLAF financial recommendations and EPPO judgment implementations: a Member State or authorising officer that has not acted within the applicable deadline shall provide a formal reasoned explanation, transmitted to the monitoring service; calls on the Commission to assess, where a pattern of non-implementation is identified, whether further action is warranted, including financial corrections or infringement proceedings;

36.Notes the particular difficulty of recovery in the revenue area, where VAT and customs losses cannot in most cases be recovered even after conviction; reminds that EPPO does not obtain directly enforceable EU decisions and that its role currently concludes with the submission of indictments to national courts, whose final judgments are enforced exclusively under national law by national enforcement authorities; stresses that action in this area must focus predominantly on early detection and precautionary measures rather than post-fraud recovery;

37.Calls on the Commission to clarify in the context of its legislative proposals the interaction between criminal confiscation proceedings and administrative financial corrections, with a view to ensuring that opening or continuation of criminal proceedings does not unduly prevent or delay appropriate measures to protect the Union budget; calls for appropriate mechanisms to ensure that criminal proceeding do not jeopardise recovery and that, where confiscation proceedings have been open for more than a defined period without effective recovery, administrative correction procedures shall be activated without delay;

38.Calls on the Commission to consider whether voluntary cooperation and an early-closure mechanism could be further developed, where the person concerned acknowledges responsibility and ensures full restitution, with a view to improving recovery and procedural efficiency; stresses that such mechanisms should not prejudice the effective investigation and prosecution of serious or organised fraud or cases requiring full investigative scrutiny;

VIII. Governance, reporting and accountability

39.Calls for the establishment of a once-a-year AFA Plenary – a structured meeting of high-level representatives of all AFA components, with an observer function for the budgetary authority and the Council Presidency; calls for a public joint statement and a confidential operational report to Parliament and the Council at each session, covering at least the overall state of the AFA, the strategic priorities adopted, and the follow-up given to commitments made at the preceding session;

40.Reiterates its call for a Consolidated AFA Annual Report (CAAR), produced by the Commission on the basis of comparable and standardised data from the relevant AFA components, covering the full anti-fraud cycle, and including a common set of system-level KPIs covering detection, prosecution, conviction and recovery rates, as well as an assessment of the PIF fraud gap estimate and the Return on Anti-Fraud Investment;

41.Calls on the Commission to ensure that the CAAR is timed to feed directly into Parliament's annual discharge procedure; calls for an appropriate and structured link between the AFA reporting cycle and the discharge procedure, so that CAAR and other relevant AFA monitoring and reporting information are made available to European Parliament as standard discharge documentation in sufficient time to support its discharge work;

42.Recalls that the protection of the Union's financial interests must be embedded in the post-2027 MFF sectoral regulations as a non-negotiable condition of sound financial management; calls on the Commission to ensure consistency between the legislative proposals accompanying or following the AFA review Communication and the MFF sectoral framework, and to identify and address, where appropriate, any divergence between anti-fraud provisions in individual sectoral legislative acts and the principles established in this Resolution;

43.Acknowledges that the AFA is under-resourced relative to the scale of its mandate; calls on the Commission to ensure that resources allocated to AFA components are proportionate to the PIF fraud gap estimate and sufficient to contribute to a positive return on anti-fraud investment;

IX. Follow-up and next steps

44.Calls on the Commission to take full account of the orientations, principles and specific requests set out in this Resolution in its forthcoming AFA review Communication, expected before the end of 2026, and in any legislative proposals accompanying or following that Communication;

45.Calls on the Commission to report to the Committee on Budgetary Control after the adoption of this Resolution, on the follow-up envisaged to the requests set out in this Resolution, including the instruments and measures through which they are to be addressed, the indicative timetable, and – where no action is envisaged – the reasons therefore;

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46.Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the European Court of Auditors, the EPPO, OLAF, Europol, Eurojust, and the governments and parliaments of the Member States.