Cooperation with the Member States

• Author: European Anti-Fraud Office (European Commission)
• Pages: 43-43

43

th Annual Report on the Protection of the European Union’s financial interests — Fight against fraud 2018

. Cooperation with

the Member States

The Advisor y Committee for Coordinatio n of Fraud Prevention (COCOLA F) brings together

Commission (OLAF) and Member State experts. It provides a forum for discussing the

main developments in the f‌ight against fraud and the preparation of this report, as re-

quired by Article 325(5) TFEU. Its work is structured around four working groups and a

plenary sess ion (see Figure 11).

The reporting and analysis subgroup of COCOLAF provided the ideal forum for discuss-

ing and f‌ine-tuning the analyses presented in the SWD on the ‘statistical evaluation of

irregularities’.

Within the fraud prevention subgroup work was started to develop a methodology for

country prof‌iles describing the anti-fraud systems of the Member States. This tool will

continue to be d eveloped over the next years .

FIGURE : COCOL AF STRUCTURE AND S UBGROUPS

The anti-fraud coordination services (AFCOS) meet annually under the chairmanship of

OLAF. In 2018, the meeting took place on 16 October. OLAF’s investigative cooperation

with AFCOS — in particular during on-the-spot checks — and information exchange

were discussed . Other topics on the agen da included conf‌identia lity of OLAF f‌inal rep orts,

overarching cooperation between the national AFCOS and the Hercule annual work pro-

gramme for 2019.

The OLAF AntiFraud Communicators’ Network (OAFCN) brings together communication

of‌f‌icers and spokespersons from OLAF’s operational partners in the Member States. In

2018, OLAF or ganised a joint press conference w ith Swedish customs on the f‌i ght against

counterfeit ing in industrial goods an d did a guest posting exercise o n Twitter with L atvian

AFCOS to prese nt the 2nd edition of their suc cessful campaign encour aging people to say

no to fraud.

Member States and the Commission exchanged views on anti-fraud matters in meet-

ings of the Council’s Working Party on Combating Fraud (GAF) under the Bulgarian and

Austrian Presidencies.

Plenary

Reporting and analysis

of fraudulent and

other irregularities

Fraud prevention

OLAF anti-fraud

communicators'

network (OAFCN)

Anti-fraud

coordination services

meeting