The External Dimension of EU Agencies and Bodies

Bringing together pioneering interdisciplinary work from European legal and political scholars, this book combines theory with empirical case studies to explore an underdeveloped field and identify a future research agenda. Chapters first comprehensively examine the relevant legal frameworks and the political aspects of these decentralized agencies' external activities, before exploring the questions this raises around their own and the EU's legitimacy and accountability, and the impact of agencies on countries outside the EU who have dealings with them.

Scholars in law, political science, economics and public administration will find this book invaluable, particularly those working on external relations, agencification or institutional innovation. It will also prove useful to policymakers at EU and national level, as well as other stakeholders such as non-EU countries and international organizations.

This timely book addresses urgent questions about the external actions of the EU?s decentralized agencies and their effects, such as how they should be conceptualized and assessed, and how these agencies can and should be governed in the future. Bringing together pioneering interdisciplinary work from European legal and political scholars, the book combines theory with empirical case studies to explore an underdeveloped field and identify a future research agenda.

'This book does pioneering work. It is, of course, common knowledge that our polities depend upon ever more finely tuned regulatory support. What this book makes us aware of is the transnational follow-up to this insight. Gaining control of globalization processes will require ever more co-operation. It is high time that we explore this irresistible development, and an important step has now been taken.'
--Christian Joerges, Hertie School of Governance, Germany

'The chapters in this book provide for a fuller understanding of the EU's international presence, and of the various venues and fora which contribute to the external diffusion of its acquis communautaire.'
--Sandra Lavenex, University of Geneva, Switzerland