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2021 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

17. European Union Agencies

Authors : Michelle Everson, Ellen Vos

Published in: The Palgrave Handbook of EU Crises

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

This chapter investigates the difficulties which EU agencies face within a Union in crisis. The institutional position of autonomous EU regulators has been challenged both in European law and within the coordination demands of a broader European crisis regime. At a deeper level, however, crisis has heightened underlying concerns about the appropriate place of autonomous governance institutions within the broader scheme of democratic politics and government. Similarly, mandate overload finds its counterpart in renewed calls for the enhanced legitimation of agency operation, a phenomenon which itself is claimed to undermine agency functionality. Autonomous agencies find themselves subjects of problems of accountability overload and of reputational risk. Finally, EU agencies are also implicated within a modern epistemological crisis which pitches a technocratic arm of administration against a rising tide of politics.

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Regulation (EU) No 1092/2010 (ESRB Regulation); Regulation No 1096/2010 (ECB Regulation); Regulation (EU) No 1095/2010 (European Securities and Markets Authority); Regulation (EU) No 1093/2010 (European Banking Authority); Regulation (EU) No 1094/2010 (European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority).

Known as the European Financial Services Action Plan, and comprising, in particular, Commission Decisions, 2001/527/EC and 2001/528/EC (EU Securities Committee and Committee of European Securities Regulators); Commission Decision 2004/10/EC (Committee of European Banking Supervisors; Commission Decision 2004/9/EC (Committee of European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Supervisors).

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EP had rejected a proposed Institutional Agreement on a common operating framework for EU agencies COM (2005) 59 final creating a factual moratorium on their establishment by demanding that the Commission undertake further review of the operations of such bodies already operating at EU level; see ‘European Agencies—the Way Forward’, COM (2008) 159 final.

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The Lisbon Treaty has also imposed EU standards upon agencies with regard to internal security, financial measures and ECB independence, the jurisdiction of the Ombudsman, audits, fraud, and citizenship. Agencies are also made subject to the principle of transparency (including access to documents), personal data protection requirements and the own-language rights of individual citizens. They are also required to establish an open, efficient and independent administration.

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As Stewart (2005) has famously demonstrated, the US Administrative Procedures Act has also become a mechanism whereby legislative programmes may be challenged during the course of their implementation.

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‘A number of provisions in the FEU Treaty none the less presuppose that such a possibility exists.’ Case 270/12, paragraph 79.

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Council Regulation (EU) No 1024/2013 of 15 October 2013 conferring specific tasks on the European Central Bank concerning policies relating to the prudential supervision of credit institutions and Regulation (EU) No 1022/2013 of the EP and of the Council of 22 October 2013 amending Regulation (EU) No 1093/2010 establishing a European Supervisory Authority (European Banking Authority) as regards the conferral of specific tasks on the European Central Bank pursuant to Council Regulation (EU) No 1024/2013.

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COM (2012) 511.

Article 1 of the ESMA, EBA and EIOPA Regulations, see n. XX above.

In elaboration of framework Directives for European financial services markets. Mirroring old-style comitology procedures and in accordance with Article 290 TFEU, the EBA drafts BTS which are given legal force as Commission Implementing Acts.

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Title: European Union Agencies
Authors: Michelle Everson
Ellen Vos
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: The Palgrave Handbook of EU Crises
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-51790-8

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-51791-5

Copyright Year: 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51791-5_17