The largest parliamentary faction of the European Parliament, the European People’s Party (EPP) supports the candidature of Romanian lawyer Laura Codruța Kövesi (45, pictured above) as the new head of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), in effect the chief prosecutor of the EU.
“To be brief, we support her. I think the politics should stay away from the elections of the European chief prosecutor. Therefore, only considering her technical capacity, we endorse her,” EPP Vice-President Esteban Gonzalez Pons told Romanian news portal HotNews.
Kövesi was shortlisted by a jury of 12 EU legal experts as their top pick for the position, followed by Jean-François Bohnert from France and Andres Ritter from Germany.
Kövesi, was born Laura Codruța Lascu in Sepsiszentgyörgy/Sfântu Gheorghe, graduated with a degree in law from the Babes-Bolyai University in Kolozsvár/Cluj Napoca and obtained her PhD in law in 2012. She was appointed Prosecutor General of Romania in 2006 at the age of 33, the youngest person ever to hold the position and the only one so far who served her full term in office.
She then served from 2013 as Chief Prosecutor of the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) until she was sacked in 2018 by justice minister Tudorel Toader for alleged abuse of power, and President Klaus Iohannis reluctantly signed off on her dismissal after the constitutional court in Bucharest ruled that he could not block the decision.
She was married to ethnic Hungarian Eduárd Kövesi and kept his former husband’s surname after the divorce.
