The Protection of Fundamental Rights in OLAF Composite Enforcement Procedures: Conclusions, Recommendations and an EPPO Outlook

Where OLAF’s composite enforcement procedures results in violations of the fundamental rights of the person concerned, OLAF’s legal framework, and those national legal frameworks that latch onto it, must be adjusted to this new composite setting and provide matching protection so as to prevent violations with the fundamental rights of the person concerned. This chapter examines this adjustment is to be brought about by answering the following question: how must the OLAF and national legal frameworks be adjusted to legally prevent violations with the fundamental rights of the person concerned in OLAF’s composite enforcement procedures? This chapter intends to both conclude and summarise the fundamental rights problems identified and to offer recommendations that improve OLAF’s legal framework and those of the national legal frameworks so as to prevent violations of the fundamental rights of the person concerned. The conclusions and recommendations are grouped on the basis of the fundamental right at issue: the right to privacy (Sect. 6.2), the principle of nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege (Sect. 6.3) and the right to a fair trial (Sect. 6.4). Effective judicial protection, because it in one way or another relates to most if not all of these rights, is subsumed under each of these sections. In issuing recommendations various alternatives are considered to arrive at the best possible solution. Section 6.5 offers some concluding remarks and sums up the recommendations. Considering the EPPO’s primary role in protecting the Union’s financial interests, this book would not be complete without spending some time and effort on the Union’s criminal justice answer to EU fraud The EPPO, in a different but similar way to OLAF, is a body that is strongly integrated with national law and national authorities. The EPPO, like OLAF, possess the characteristics necessary to qualify its investigations, prosecutions, and adjudications as composite enforcement procedures. As a result, in similar but also different ways, the suspect subject to an EPPO case is likely to face fundamental rights problems that resemble those of the person concerned in OLAF investigation and coordination cases. This chapter intends to provide an ‘outlook’. The purpose of this outlook is to see whether and which fundamental rights issues we can expect in the new EPPO setting. Quite obviously, within the space that remains in this book, there is no room for a full-fledged top-down and bottom-up analysis of the EPPO legal framework with that of (some of) the participating Member States. Some of the issues may, for that reason, seem premature. To be sure the outlook only flags potential issues and recommends avenues for future research that need to be followed in order to establish the issues flagged.