Madalina Busuioc

Agency growth between autonomy and accountability: the European Police Office as a ‘living institution’

Autonomy and accountability of public agencies are two sides of the same coin, yet often they are examined separately and at only one point in time. This contribution therefore examines the interaction between accountability and autonomy over time. It does so in the context of a European Union agency, the European Police Office (Europol), the creation of which has been the subject of much contestation and discussion in terms of its possibility to wield autonomy and escape accountability. The contribution looks at de jure aspects of both autonomy and accountability, but moves beyond a strictly formal analysis and investigates actual practices. Drawing on extensive document analysis and 26 in-depth semi-structured interviews with key agency officials as well as members of the relevant accountability forums, this contribution shows that tailored accountability arrangements, which are acceptable to the actors involved, reinforce autonomy, whereas an inappropriate and contested accountability system has the opposite effect, stifling autonomous development, as seems to have been the case with regard to Europol.

European agencies and their boards: promises and pitfalls of accountability beyond design

European agencies have become an established part of the European Unions architectural set up and are the most proliferating institutional entities at the EU level. However, as their relevance and prevalence in the EU institutional landscape has increased, so have concerns about the possibility for such bodies to escape scrutiny. This article investigates a central element of agency accountability: their accountability vis-à-vis the management boards. The main and most direct confines on the grant of authority to agencies and their directors are represented by the management boards. Given the formal powers exercised by European agencies, it is important to observe to what extent boards are successful in exercising their scrutinizing roles. Based on interviews with agency directors and board representatives, this contribution unravels how these accountability ties operate in practice and identifies recurring weaknesses that seriously impinge upon their effectiveness. The contribution offers a potential explanation for the observed failings and reflects on the repercussions of these findings for agency accountability.

The Politics of Information in EU Internal Security: Information-Sharing by European Agencies

The European Union is quietly emerging as a significant security actor in its own right (Bickerton et al. 2011; Curtin 2011). As evidenced by recurring legal and policy documents,1 EU policy on its own ‘internal’ security is taking shape bit-by-bit and in an accelerated fashion over the course of the past few years (see also Busuioc and Curtin 2011). Central to the EU internal security map is a growing role for intelligence-type agencies (see also chapter by Duke in this volume). European agencies, more broadly, play a central role in the enhanced sharing of information as they gather, process, and disseminate information among themselves, but also to the EU institutions (and other bodies), to and from the member states’ organizations, as well to external actors. In the words of the European Commission President, they act as ‘satellites — picking up signals on the ground, processing them, and beaming them back and forth’.2 In the field of internal security particularly, given the traditional resistance to broader delegations of power premised on the sensitivity of this field (Monar 2010, 239), the gathering, exchange, and analysis of information is a defining element of cooperation in this area.

Building Joint Capacity: The Role of European Union Agencies in the Management of Trans-Boundary Crises

This paper focuses on the growing role of European Union (EU) agencies in the management of trans-boundary crises. It makes this development explicit, demonstrating that the emergence of multiple agencies with specific crisis preparation or response tasks has transformed the EU’s crisis management arrangements and structures. By relying on both the literature on crisis management and EU agencies, the paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the existing (and evolving) multi-agency model, comparing it with a more centralized, singleagency model. It reflects on the role of EU agencies within the expanding contours of the EU’s emerging crisis capacity and the most appropriate way forward for effective and legitimate crisis management at the EU level, thus contributing to both the debate on the EU’s role in crisis management and the delegation of tasks to specialized EU agencies.