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Everson, Michelle --- "Agencies: The ‘Dark Hour’ of the Executive?" [2009] ELECD 347; in Hofmann, C.H. Herwig; Türk, H. Alexander (eds), "Legal Challenges in EU Administrative Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009)

Book Title: Legal Challenges in EU Administrative Law

Editor(s): Hofmann, C.H. Herwig; Türk, H. Alexander

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847207883

Section: Chapter 5

Section Title: Agencies: The ‘Dark Hour’ of the Executive?

Author(s): Everson, Michelle

Number of pages: 20

Extract:

5. Agencies: the `dark hour' of the
executive?
Michelle Everson

I. INTRODUCTION

Long-term supporters of agencies within the European Communities and
Union may have much to celebrate. The individual institutions of the
European Union, together with the Member States, are now close to agree-
ing upon an integrated operating framework for regulatory agencies within
the EU;1 by the same token, and perhaps most importantly, agreement
upon the future operation of agencies at EU level appears also to satisfy
the primary demand of scholars concerned with the appropriate institu-
tional design of `apolitical' agencies, that `no one controls the agency, yet
the agency is under control' (Moe, 1990; Majone, 1994; Everson, 1995).
On the one hand, the operating independence of European agencies has
been further secured by the withdrawal of the European Parliament from
earlier demands that it be represented on agency management boards.
Equally, however, the European Commission has also signalled its will-
ingness to loosen its own institutional apron strings, engaging in repeated
rhetorical affirmation of its view that the `structural autonomy', if not full
decisional independence, of agencies should now be guaranteed.2
Following a recent constitutional impasse, the core of the `techno-
cratic' vision of the European integration telos would thus appear to have
received an important degree of reinvigorating approbation. Rather than
only concern itself with grand principles of joint and several government,
the EU has now also paid renewed attention to its long-standing function
of supplying efficient and appropriate technical administration. The ...