ABSTRACT
Having examined in the previous chapter the access to documents rules, a prerequisite of accountability, it is important to assess the accountability regime of the decentralised agencies because the Council and the EP are no longer the de facto legislative forums. In fact, the Council, the EP and the Commission delegate a whole range of powers to agencies which have been set up to regulate areas that vary all the way from disease prevention and economics to energy and telecommunications, to mention but a few areas. Therefore, the analysis on accountability would not be comprehensive without examining the case of agencies established and active at the EU level of governance. In doing so, this chapter first sets the scene relative to the agencies’ regime and second, explores whether the key institutions and main delegators, being the Commission, the Council and the EP, supervise agencies’ actions and monitor sufficiently the implementation of tasks entrusted to agencies. It will be shown that agencies suffer from fundamental accountability problems. Delegating tasks to agencies without securing accountability constitutes a prima facie threat to the principle of the institutional balance. Before going into depth with these issues, however, a general background is provided below.
