Designing accountability mechanisms of EU agencies

Autor principal:
Nuria Font Borrás (Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona)
Programa:
Sesión 1
Día: jueves, 19 de septiembre de 2013
Hora: 11:45 a 14:15
Lugar: E10SEM05

The creation of more than thirty EU specialized agencies over the last two decades has rapidly transformed the configuration of EU executive politics. Agency designers have entrusted these non-majoritarian bodies with varying types of powers in a wide number of regulatory fields with the expectation of enhancing the credibility of commitments and the efficiency of policies. At the same time, they have incorporated different types of accountability provisions in agencies’ founding regulations in order to prevent these non-majoritarian bodies to go beyond their formal powers and avoid control from political principals. This paper conducts a comprehensive study of accountability of EU agencies by focusing the formal mechanisms of information, evaluation and sanction established in agencies’ statutes. The main concern of the study is to explore under which institutional and political conditions accountability mechanisms are incorporated in agency design. The paper is structured as follows. The first section offers the main theoretical and conceptual debates in which this study is grounded, the main hypothesis and the data and methods employed in the analysis. The following section aims at mapping EU agencies accountability instruments by systematically analyzing formal provisions established in their founding regulations. The third section assesses several institutional and political conditions favouring the inclusion of accountability mechanisms at agencies’ statutes. The paper ends with some concluding remarks and an assessment of the expected theoretical contribution.

Palabras clave: EU agencies accountability