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.

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 book examines the role of agencies and agency-like bodies in the EU’s Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ).When the Maastricht Treaty entered into force on 1 November 1993, the institutional landscape of the so-called ‘Third Pillar’ looked significantly different than it does now. Aside from Europol, which existed only on paper at that time, the European agencies examined in this book were mere ideas in the heads of federalist dreamers or were not even contemplated. Eventually, Europol slowly emerged from its embryonic European Drugs Unit and became operational in 1999. Around the same time, the European Union (EU) unveiled plans in its Tampere Programme for a more extensive legal and institutional infrastructure for internal security policies. Since then, as evidenced by the chapters presented in this book, numerous policy developments have taken place. Indeed, the agencies now operating in the EU’s Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) are remarkable in the burgeoning scope of their activities, as well as their gradually increasing autonomy vis-à-vis the EU member states and the institutions that brought them to life. This book was published as a special issue of Perspectives on European Politics and Society.

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.

European agencies have been created at a rapid pace in recent years in a multitude of diverse fields from pharmaceuticals to financial supervision. This book examines how the accountability system of these agencies operates formally and in practice, studying the legal provisions in place and their de facto implementation.

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.

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?