The EU’s anti-fraud watchdog has turned fraud recovery into its headline mission for 2026, and its latest figures show why. The European Anti-Fraud Office, known as OLAF, recommended clawing back almost 600 million euros of misused EU money in its annual report, a reminder that leakage from the budget remains stubbornly large.

OLAF published the 2025 report in April 2026, putting the recovery figure at 597 million euros. Investigators also blocked a further 18 million euros before it could be wrongly spent, money the office says would otherwise have drained away.

The caseload underlines a busy year. OLAF closed 209 investigations and opened 254 new ones, drawing on more than 1,140 incoming reports of fraud and irregularity. Each new case reflects a decision that the evidence justified a full inquiry rather than a quiet dismissal.

Spending fraud followed familiar patterns. Investigators most often found rigged procurement, undisclosed conflicts of interest and inflated invoices, the everyday tools that divert public grants and contracts. These schemes rarely announce themselves, which makes tip-offs and data analysis central to the office’s work.

Revenue fraud told a different story. Here the office chased tobacco and e-cigarette smuggling, trade diversion and the evasion of customs duties and VAT, cases where criminals rob the budget at the border rather than the grant desk. Cheap illicit cigarettes alone cost member states billions in lost tax each year.

Sanctions enforcement has widened the office’s remit. In January 2026 OLAF coordinated an international investigation into the suspected circumvention of EU sanctions involving more than 760 transport vehicles, showing how fraud, smuggling and geopolitics now blur together.

The long view flatters the office. Over the past decade its work has helped recover or protect roughly 6.8 billion euros, a running tally that lets it argue its budget pays for itself many times over. Defenders say every euro recovered strengthens the case for tougher oversight.

This year’s report also changed shape. For the first time OLAF paired its findings with recommended actions for the institutions, governments and agencies it works alongside, nudging them toward a more coordinated defence rather than leaving each body to react alone. The Commission has signalled that it wants to sharpen those tools further.

Politics sharpens the stakes. As the bloc negotiates its next long-term budget and channels vast recovery funds through national capitals, the risk that money goes astray climbs, and so does the scrutiny. Lawmakers who guard the purse increasingly cite OLAF’s numbers when they demand stricter conditions on how governments spend.

The office still faces hard limits. It can recommend recovery, but national authorities and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office must act to claw the money back and pursue any crimes. How much of that 597 million euros actually returns to taxpayers will depend on follow-through long after the headlines fade.