The measures proposed seek to protect taxpayers' money from fraud across the EU. The Commission plans to strengthen substantive criminal law by clarifying definitions of crime such as embezzlement or abuse of power and reinforce the capacities of the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) and Eurojust (the EU's judicial cooperation body).

Fraud and corruption involving EU funds at the national level can come in many forms. The wide variety of legal systems in Europe makes protecting the EU’s financial interests a particular challenge. Police, prosecutors and judges in the EU Member States decide on the basis of their own national rules how to intervene to protect EU finances. As a result, the conviction rate in cases involving crimes against the EU budget varies considerably across the EU, ranging from 14% to 80%.

Although, the EU Treaties include useful possibilities to protect the EU's financial interests, such as the establishment of minimum criminal law rules (article 83 TFEU) or new investigative powers for Eurojust, the EU's judicial cooperation body (article 85 TFEU) and the possibility of establishing a European Public Prosecutor's Office to combat crimes affecting the EU’s financial interests (article 86 TFEU), the Commission's Communication foresees several areas where criminal law could be further improved to protect the EU's financial interests:

• Stronger procedures: Extending exchanges of information between different actors, including police, customs, tax authorities, judiciary authorities and other competent authorities; a new proposal on mutual administrative assistance for the protection of EU's financial interest is planned.
• Strengthening substantive criminal law.
• Strengthening the role of bodies at European level: Both OLAF, which is currently being reformed and Eurojust need to be further reinforced.
• The EU will consider how a specialised European Public Prosecutor's Office could apply common rules on fraud and other offenses against the EU’s financial interests.

National investigators, prosecutors and judges are already working to fight such crime together with OLAF and Eurojust. However, they are facing some serious legal and practical obstacles. These include restrictions in their competence to cases arising within their own country, legal issues in the use of evidence from abroad and uneven rules on the fight against fraud and related crime. From 2000, 93 out of a total of 647 OLAF cases were dismissed by national prosecutors for no specific reason and 178 cases due to discretionary reasons.