This book provides a wealth of empirical material to understand key aspects of EU governance including its plurality of actors and policy making modes and its functioning during crisis management. Authored by legal scholars and political scientists, it presents new research and insights on the role of EU agencies in the context of the Euro and migration crises. Specifically, the contributions assess why the crises have led to the creation of new EU agencies and what roles these agencies have performed since their inception; how the crisis, notably the migration crisis, has impacted on existing EU agencies; how EU agencies have shaped the policies during and after the crises; and, how the crisis has affected the accountability of EU agencies. This book is essential in understanding the intricacies of EU crisis management and the specific role of EU agencies therein, as well as EU governance more broadly. Chapter 9 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Despite concerted efforts in recent years to define the position of agencies in the Union framework, a clear overall view of their role and powers in relation to the EU institutions and to the Member States is still lacking. Their hybrid character as part of the composite EU executive, and the fact that increasing powers are delegated to them, makes an understanding of the efficacy and accountability of agencies ever more important. Benefitting from both academic and practitioner insights from law, political and social sciences, this important book offers an in-depth analysis of the current challenges surrounding European agencies in terms of their design, autonomy, supervisory competence, and legal nature. Among the topics covered are the following: realities of the accountability mechanisms currently in place; impact of agency acts on the EU's institutional balance of powers; agencies as global actors acting on behalf of Member States and EU external relations; agencies derived from former networks of national regulators; non-hierarchical 'par' nature of agencies vis-à-vis corresponding national authorities; agencies as crucial amalgams between EU institutions and Member States; effect of the Meroni doctrine; new financial supervisory agencies resulting from recent economic and financial crises; special role of telecommunications agencies; and intricacies of the relationship between agencies and the European Parliament. Because EU agencies are designed to facilitate the implementation of EU law at the national level, powers are increasingly conferred on them in order to ensure that rules are enforced effectively and uniformly. The time has come, however, to confront the many questions of legality and constitutionality that remain. This book responds to the vital as to the role and powers of agencies in relation to their manifold 'principals', the EU institutions and the Member States, and lays a firm foundation for managing the challenges ahead.

This insightful book analyzes the evolution of the operational tasks and cooperation of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (FRONTEX), the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) and the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (EUROPOL). Exploring the recent expansion of the legal mandates of these decentralized EU agencies and the activities they undertake in practice, David Fernández-Rojo offers a critical assessment of the EU migration agencies.

This book examines a largely unexplored dimension of the European agencies, namely their role in EU external relations and on the international plane. International cooperation has become a salient feature of EU agencies triggering important legal questions regarding the scope and limits of their international dimension, the nature and effects of their international cooperation instruments, their status within the EU and on the global level, and leading potentially to tensions between EU law and international law. This book fills the existing knowledge gap by scrutinizing the international cooperation legal framework and practice of EU agencies, including their mandate, tasks and instruments, together with their legal status as actors with a global dimension. It sets out a general legal-analytical framework which combines legal parameters from EU and international law to assess EU agencies as global actors, and examines in detail three case studies on carefully selected agencies to shed light on the complexities of EU agencies’ daily international cooperation.

Providing the first comprehensive overview of the development of agencification in the EU, this book explores the question: What are the political and legal limits to EU agencification?

Controlling EU Agencies launches the debate on how to build a comprehensive system of controls in light of the ongoing trends of agencification and Europeanisation of the executive in the EU.

Over the last two decades, EU legislation has established a growing number of subsidiary bodies commonly referred to as EU decentralised agencies. Recent years have witnessed the conferral of increasingly significant powers to these bodies to the point where the successful implementation of many of the EU's policies is now dependent upon the activities of EU agencies. While EU agencies have become indispensable in terms of their practical importance, the lack of a legal basis in the EU Treaties to establish and empower new bodies as well as the lack of an adequate framework in secondary law means that there exists little control over EU agencies. This results in critical issues, such as the absence of clear criteria prescribing when an agency may be empowered to act and also the failure to consider the interests of the actors normally responsible for the implementation of EU law, such as the Member States and the Commission. Providing the first comprehensive overview of the development of agencification in the EU, this book explores the question: What are the political and legal limits to EU agencification? Analysing EU agencies from an institutional and constitutional perspective, the book traces the development of EU agencies, explores the different tasks they perform, investigates the limits to agencification, and discusses the legal basis for such agencies.