Sofia: No charges have been brought in Bulgaria on OLAF recommendations between 2021 and 2025, according to the annual report of the European Anti-Fraud Office presented on 20 April 2026. The office carried out 42 checks in the country over those five years, and the figure shows how rarely administrative findings turn into criminal cases at national level.

In five cases where OLAF recommended follow-up action, Bulgarian authorities decided to discontinue the proceedings, and one decision was still pending when the report appeared. In 2025 alone the office concluded five checks in Bulgaria and recommended follow-up in two of them. The OLAF recommendations follow a simple logic. Investigators who find suspected fraud or irregularities pass their conclusions to national authorities, who decide whether to act.

OLAF recommendations come in two main forms. Financial ones ask national or EU bodies to recover money that was wrongly spent, while judicial ones suggest that prosecutors assess whether to open criminal proceedings. Where evidence of a crime is compelling, OLAF transfers the file to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, known as EPPO, which handles criminal cases involving damage of at least €10,000 to the EU budget.

The Bulgarian result sits inside a wider picture. Across the Union, OLAF issued 145 judicial recommendations between 2021 and 2025. National authorities took 73 decisions on them, and 27 of those decisions led to charges. Roughly one in five OLAF recommendations therefore ended in a prosecution, a ratio that makes the Bulgarian record of zero stand out without proving wrongdoing by any authority.

Recoveries have also moved. The report shows that amounts linked to OLAF recommendations over the past decade ranged from more than €3 billion in 2017 to just over €500 million last year. A fall of that size can reflect the mix of cases in a given year as much as changes in enforcement, so the trend needs careful reading.

The figures arrive at a sensitive moment for the Union’s anti-fraud system. The European Court of Auditors found in a special report that OLAF and EPPO exchange information poorly, and that the Commission cannot tell whether all court-ordered recoveries reach the EU budget. The Commission accepted the recommendations of the auditors, and its review of the anti-fraud architecture produced a white paper in July 2025.

The report names no Bulgarian officials and gives no reasons for the discontinued cases, so the reasons behind the outcome remain unknown. Prosecutors may have found insufficient evidence, or limitation periods may have expired. Until national authorities explain their decisions, OLAF recommendations will keep ending in a gap between Brussels findings and Sofia courtrooms, and the pressure for a shared case-tracking system will grow.