The EPPO was established by Regulation 2017/1939, which entered into force on 20 November 2017, under enhanced cooperation to fight crimes affecting the Union budget. The Office is currently in the set-up phase with the aim of becoming operational at the end of 2020. On 12 September 2018, the Commission published a Communication on the extension of the EPPO’s competences to cross-border terrorist crimes and invited the European Council to take this initiative forward at the informal summit in Sibiu on 9 May 2019. As a single, decentralised European prosecution office, the EPPO could become an effective tool in investigating, prosecuting and bringing to judgement terrorist crimes and add a European dimension to the current efforts. Compared to the present horizontal, multinational approach, the EPPO would create a vertical, European relationship amongst the Member States and Union actors. This could be a decisive qualitative improvement, which would help overcoming the divergences of effective investigation and prosecution of terrorist crimes across the EU.
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