Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker.

My guest today made her reputation as a precociously young and hard-nosed prosecutor in Romania.

By the age of 33, Lara Kovishi was the country's youngest ever general prosecutor,

and in 2013, she was appointed chief prosecutor in the National Anti-Corruption Agency.

Over the course of the next five years, her office went after and secured convictions against

a host of the country's political elite, including 14 serving or ex-government ministers and hundreds of more junior officials.

Not surprisingly, she ruffled feathers, most particularly in the ruling Social Democratic Party.

And in 2018, she was fired, accused of covert collaboration with the intelligence services to entrap politicians.

But by then, she had established a Europe-wide reputation as a corruption buster.

And last year, she was appointed as the EU's first chief public prosecutor,

put in charge of a new agency given new teeth to tackle transnational fraud and corruption within the Union.

Almost a year later, her agency isn't yet fully functional,

and half a dozen member states have opted out of full cooperation.

So just how serious is the EU's commitment to root out corruption?

Well, Lara Kovashi joins me now from Luxembourg.

Welcome to Hard Talk.

Thank you very much for the invitation.

You have had almost a year since your appointment as the EU's first chief public prosecutor, you are trying to deal with a very urgent problem that costs the EU billions of euros.

What have you actually done so far?

I took my office in 1st of November and I started to organize together with a small team that I found here.

In the beginning, the administrative issues that are necessary.

To start the EPPO is necessary to have the European prosecutors,

...