Jonah Redfern 
The European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) has opened criminal proceedings over EU subsidies paid to the Agrofert holding, the agriculture and food conglomerate founded by Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš. Multiple Czech outlets reported the development within the past hour, first surfaced by Seznam Zprávy and relayed by Czech Television.
According to Novinky, the EPPO is acting on a criminal complaint filed in February by the Czech Pirate Party over Babiš's alleged "conflict of interest". The prosecutors are examining, among others, the politicians and officials who made the disbursements possible. They are also asking why the Czech Republic has not recovered subsidies paid to the holding in the past.
What the EPPO is and why it can act
The EPPO is an independent EU body that investigates and prosecutes crimes affecting the Union's financial interests, generally fraud, corruption and the misuse of EU funds. It operates in the participating member states, Czechia among them, and can act where national authorities do not. Opening proceedings is an investigative step, not a charge or a finding of guilt; the persons examined are entitled to the presumption of innocence.
The complaint touches a long-running dispute. Babiš founded Agrofert, one of the largest recipients of agricultural and structural funds in the country. Critics have argued for years that a sitting prime minister cannot be a beneficiary of companies that draw EU money he helps administer. Per Czech Television, Babiš placed his Agrofert shares into a trust, the RSVP Trust, in February, and considers the conflict of interest thereby resolved.
The political reaction
The response from Babiš's ANO movement was immediate and dismissive. Reacting to the report carried by iDNES, Finance Minister Alena Schillerová said the case had been triggered "on a tip-off from the Pirates". Taťána Malá, who leads ANO's parliamentary deputies, said of the Pirate Party that it has "no themes other than Anti-Babiš".
Why the timing matters
The proceedings land while Babiš is promoting a European air-defence initiative abroad, an awkward juxtaposition between his international profile and a domestic legal cloud. The two strands are not connected in substance, but the optics sharpen the political stakes at home.
Two questions run beneath the case. The first is whether the February trust arrangement genuinely severs the conflict of interest or merely reformats it, a point on which Czech and EU readings have diverged before. The second, raised directly by the prosecutors per Novinky, is the Czech state's failure to claw back earlier subsidies, which shifts scrutiny from Babiš alone toward the officials who signed off on the payments.
What to watch next
- Whether the EPPO names specific individuals as suspects, or the inquiry concludes without charges.
- How the office treats the RSVP Trust, which Babiš says resolved his conflict of interest.
- Whether the strand on unrecovered past subsidies draws in Czech officials and the responsible ministries.
- The Czech government's stance on subsidy recovery, and any official response from Agrofert.
