Portugal notified on suspicion of fraud with EU funds in 2025

ANDat a press conference presenting the annual report on the EU budget for 2025, the Portuguese member of the ECA, João Leão, revealed ‘a case of suspected fraud associated with Portugal, which is close to EUR 1 million’.

This is ‘a situation involving a particular company’ and a total amount of EUR 755 000, with European funding of EUR 391,000 from Portugal 2020, he added.

‘The case has been forwarded to both the European Anti-Fraud Office and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office and the investigation is currently in charge of the European Public Prosecutor’, said João Leão.

According to the Portuguese official, 'Portugal has appeared in situations such as this year and does not stand out for the negative or necessarily positive' when it comes to fraud with Community funds.

"It is one of the countries that sometimes appears. Last year I didn't have any suspicions of fraud and this year I had an affair again", he said.

The case now identified arises after the ECA has detected three cases of suspected fraud associated with Portugal in the 2023 expenditure audit, all related to cohesion funds and Portugal 2020, and none in the 2024 expenditure audit.

Still, João Leão pointed out that, although the court has found in the EU as a whole milestones and targets not met in the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism, which finances the RRPs, “no [case] concerns Portugal”.

Throughout the European Union, in 2025, ‘the Court communicated to the European Anti-Fraud Office 17 cases of suspected fraud, of which seven were detected during the 2024 expenditure audit, seven others during the 2023 expenditure audit and one in the context of a result audit of the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance’, the annual report states.

This number compares with 19 cases of suspected fraud in 2024.

In addition, ‘one of the two remaining cases has been reported by the Court’s office responsible for recruitment and the other by a third party’, it is stated

In parallel, the Court communicated 12 of these cases to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, eight of which initiated investigations.

In the report, the ECA also warns of persistent problems in the implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism (RRM), created after the covid-19 pandemic and financing the Recovery and Resilience Plans (RRP).

In 2025, EUR 40.1 billion was paid to the EU countries through the MRR, and in nine of the 37 grants payments analysed, the rules were not complied with, failing to meet targets and milestones, violations of procurement rules and irregularities related to State aid.

The ECA examined 420 milestones and targets and found that, of the total, 16 did not meet the payment and eligibility conditions and that nine payments were made to nine Member States. Portugal is not covered.

The Community auditor has therefore delivered an opinion with reservations on MRR payments.

At the same time, the ECA maintained, for the seventh consecutive year, an adverse opinion on EU budgetary expenditure, given the ‘material and general errors’ detected in the audit.

Expenditure in the EU budget amounted to EUR 176.3 billion in 2025, with an estimated error rate of 3.8% above 3.6% in 2024.

The Court points out that this error rate does not in itself indicate fraud, lack of efficiency or waste, but rather an estimate of the money that has not been used in accordance with national and European rules.