How is the European Union Involved in the Member States’ Efforts to Fight Fraud?
In this paper we present the efforts pursued by the European Union to coordinate the Member States in fighting fraud. As its own infrastructure is quite limited the European Union has developed influence over the Member States bodies responsible with fighting the phenomenon. This influence is materialized in the power to create European policies, to run its own supervisory bodies and in the power to control and evaluate how the European policies are implemented in the Member States. In order to better understand these instruments we present them in the form of a matrix with three lines and three columns. The lines of the matrix provide information about the efforts made for protecting the European Union's financial interests, fighting against counterfeiting and fighting against corruption, while the columns present legislative, institutional and administrative developments. For the legislative instruments we draft an overview of the Action Plans, Conventions, Council Decisions and Directives in force in the area concerned. In point of institutional developments we present the responsibilities of specially designed EU institutions, such are the European Anti-Fraud Office, the European Technical and Scientific Centre, the Advisory Committee for the Coordination of Fraud Prevention or the Court of Auditors of the European Communities. As far as the administrative developments are concerned we present the Fifth round of mutual evaluations – financial crime and financial investigation, carried out in all Member States by teams of experts from EU institutions and other Member States under the umbrella of the Multidisciplinary Group of the Council of the European Union for Organized Crime