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Designing Accountability Regimes at the European Union Level

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Accountability and Regulatory Governance

Part of the book series: Executive Politics and Governance Series ((EXPOLGOV))

Abstract

The proliferation of agencies in the European Union (EU) during the last two decades has been one of the most remarkable transformations of executive politics and regulatory governance at the EU level, in the context of regulatory capitalism (Levi-Faur 2005; Levi-Faur and Jordana 2005). The first agencies were created in the mid-1970s and by 2014, following two more waves of agency creation in the early 1990s and during the 2000s, there were 35 operating on a stable basis. EU agencies cover a wide range of policy fields, including environmental protection, transport, food safety, occupational training, pharmaceuticals, internal market, asylum support, financial markets, defence and judicial cooperation. One of the most specific trends of EU agencies as compared to national ones is that none of them has been entrusted with genuine rule-making powers (Busuioc 2013). That said, agency configurations in the EU are manifold, with noticeable differences observed as regards tasks and institutional configurations.

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Authors
  1. Nuria Font
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institut Barcelona d’Etudis Internacionals (IBEI), Spain

    Andrea C. Bianculli (Research Fellow) (Research Fellow)

  2. ESADE Business School, Spain

    Xavier Fernández-i-Marín (Senior Researcher) (Senior Researcher)

  3. Universitat Pompeu Fabra and Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI), Spain

    Jacint Jordana (Professor) (Professor)

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© 2015 Nuria Font

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Font, N. (2015). Designing Accountability Regimes at the European Union Level. In: Bianculli, A.C., Fernández-i-Marín, X., Jordana, J. (eds) Accountability and Regulatory Governance. Executive Politics and Governance Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137349583_6

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