European Union Agencies Research Articles

The EU Health Task Force, supporting preparedness and response in the European Union and globally

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic revealed shortcomings in the European Union (EU) mechanisms for managing public health threats. In 2022, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) was mandated to establish the EU Health Task Force (EUHTF) to strengthen preparedness and response at country, EU and global levels. The EUHTF is coordinated by an ECDC Permanent Capacity and relies on pools of experts including ECDC experts, ECDC fellows and European public health experts that can be mobilized for specific assignments or broad public health emergencies. Members from EU/ Economic European Area (EEA) countries, EU agencies, the European Commission, WHO and non-profit organizations advise ECDC on the EUHTF establishment. From May 2023 to April 2024, the EUHTF addressed 13 requests for support from seven EU countries and three non-EU countries. The requests were related to preparedness (e.g. after-action reviews, simulation exercises, mass gathering preparation, capacity building) and emergency response activities (e.g. risk assessment, operational research during crisis, emergency and outbreak response). The EUHTF is operational and able to mobilize expertise from ECDC, the ECDC fellowship and EU/EEA countries. The EUHTF Pool of External Experts, comprised of public health professionals across various levels and institutions of the EU/EEA, is poised to offer comprehensive and robust expertise. Through these resources, the EUHTF is collaborating with and reinforcing the work of EU institutions and other international partners in strengthening preparedness and response. The EUHTF is a new and structured EU-level approach to public health crises, ensuring tailored in-country support to EU and non-EU countries in preparedness strengthening and crisis response.

The competence‐control dilemma and the institutional design of European Union agencies

AbstractIn the past decades, European Union (EU) agencies have proliferated to address a plethora of governance problems. When designing EU agencies, EU legislators confront a tension: Legislators want agencies to be competent problem‐solvers, but they also want to keep agencies under control. How do EU legislators balance these two imperatives? We argue that agencies' political principals do not necessarily have to trade competence for control, and vice versa, but can draw on different institutional strategies – manipulating agencies' decision‐making and decision‐maker independence – to mitigate the competence‐control dilemma. Drawing on an original dataset on EU agencies' formal independence, we demonstrate empirically that principals customize EU agencies' independence to match the respective competence and control demands that come with specific agency tasks: regulation, authorization, implementation and information. The paper makes an important contribution to the literature on the drivers of the EU's agencification and to debates on the institutional design of regulatory institutions in the EU and beyond.

Understanding bias better: a qualitative exploration of bias in advisory councils of EU agencies

ABSTRACT European Union (EU) agencies are known to have a high risk of capture by regulated business interests. To limit this risk, agencies try to involve a diverse set of stakeholders. One way of doing so, is to install advisory councils (ACs): permanent bodies with a fixed number of stakeholders selected by the agency. Current scholarship has mainly studied whether stakeholders’ access to ACs is biased towards business interests. However, it remains unknown whether the ACs functioning might also be biased. This research note presents a strategy to go beyond access and look inside the ACs. By examining how members perceive the councils, its meetings and the discussions therein, it explores whether the councils’ functioning contributes to more balanced interest representation. We illustrate that although the councils’ members are willing to prioritize seeking consensus over defending their own interests, finding this consensus proves difficult due to asymmetries in resources, thus stressing the need for a better understanding of bias. We end with proposing further qualitative approaches to study bias of advisory bodies in the future.

Expansion without mandates: Border and asylum agencies in European Union migration governance

AbstractThe European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) and the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) have experienced increases in available resources and have conducted joint operations with European Union (EU) Member States in recent years. They may be regarded as examples of agencification in border protection and asylum policy, but this paper argues that agencification has proceeded without an expansion in agency mandates. Using Frontex and EASO operations in two Southern European border countries, Cyprus and Greece, as comparative case studies, I show that the two agencies have employed their growing technical, performative, legal and moral resources to legitimize efficient processing of asylum applications in reception centers, and coordinated border protection and more/swifter returns. At the same time, the absence of mandates on final decision‐making has diluted policy accountability and weakened monitoring vis‐à‐vis Member States, with respect to fundamental rights violations and the implementation of EU law. This resource expansion without mandates has allowed EU agencies to resolve long‐standing tensions among Member States and the European Commission in a contested policy area. The analysis has broader implications for the role of agencies in multilevel migration governance.

Relative poverty is associated with increased risk of diabetic ketoacidosis at onset of type 1 diabetes in children. A Swedish national population-based study in 2014-2019.

The aim of the study was to estimate the effect of household relative poverty on the risk of diabetic ketoacidosis at diagnosis of children with type 1 diabetes using an international standard measurement of relative poverty. A national population-based retrospective study was conducted. The Swedish National Diabetes Register (NDR) was linked with data from Sweden's public statistical agency (Statistics Sweden). Children who were diagnosed with new-onset type 1 diabetes in the period of 2014-2019 were common identifiers. The definition of diabetic ketoacidosis was venous pH <7.30 or a serum bicarbonate level <18 mmol/L. The exposure variable was defined according to the standard definition of the persistent at-risk-of-poverty rate used by the statistical office of the European Union (Eurostat) and several other European public statistical agencies. Univariate and multi-variable analyses were used to calculate the effect of relative poverty on the risk of diabetic ketoacidosis. Children from households with relative poverty had a 41% higher risk of diabetic ketoacidosis (1.41, CI 1.12-1.77, p = 0.004) and more than double the risk of severe diabetic ketoacidosis (pH <7.10) (RR 2.10, CI 1.35-3.25, p = 0.001), as compared to children from households without relative poverty. Relative poverty significantly increases the risk of diabetic ketoacidosis at onset of type 1 diabetes in children, even in a high-income country with publicly reimbursed health care.

From accountability victim to accountability entrepreneur: testing reputation-informed explanations of voluntary accountability among European Union agencies

ABSTRACT Recent research reveals that EU agencies have initiated a whole set of voluntary accountability practices. Reputational considerations have been put forward as an important mechanism driving such organisational behaviour. This paper tests this theoretical explanation in a quantitative manner based on a survey among EU agency leaders. We find that the factors explaining voluntary accountability differ depending on the audience to whom account is rendered. Nonetheless, a consistent finding is that media salience is associated with voluntary account-giving, which supports the argument that voluntary account-giving helps agencies to mitigate the risks of reputational threats. The analysis also suggests that voluntary accountability is useful for highlighting the agency’s competence when principals are not paying close attention to the agency’s performance. These results show that a reputational, multi-audience perspective helps us understand which EU agencies are likely to become accountability entrepreneurs and to whom they will expand their accountability.

Promoting Urban Farming for Creating Sustainable Cities in Nepal

This paper responds to the research question, “can urban farming in Nepal help create sustainable cities?” Especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, urban residents have begun to realize that food transported from long distances is not always reliable. Urban farming can help produce fresh food locally and help urban residents become self-reliant by engaging in healthy eating habits and practicing sustainable agricultural techniques in food-desert areas, while creating a positive impact on the environment through regenerative agricultural methods. In doing so, urban farms can help the growers save on food expenditures and even earn some additional income, while also improving air quality and minimizing the effects of urban heat islands. This practice also helps reduce greenhouse gases through plant carbon use efficiency (CUE), as vegetation carbon dynamics (VCD) can be adjusted while supporting the circular economy. As urban lands command higher prices than agricultural land, urban farming usually happens on residential yards, roofs, balconies, community gardens, and dedicated areas in public parks. Rainwater harvesting and redirecting can help irrigate urban farms, which can be part of rain gardens. The national census of 2021 identified that 66% of Nepal’s population lives in urban areas. However, the World Bank (2018) showed that only 21 of Nepal’s population was projected to live in urban areas in 2021. It is not debatable that the urbanization process in Nepal is on the rise. Thus, urban agriculture can play an important role in supplementing residents’ food needs. Many cities in Nepal have already successfully adapted to urban farming wherein residents grow food on their building sites, balconies, and rooftop, often growing plants in pots, vases, and other types of containers. The UN-Habitat, with the support of the European Union and local agencies, published a rooftop farming training manual (2014), showing the feasibility of urban farming in Nepal. This paper discusses how public-private partnership (PPP) can promote urban agriculture and make the process more effective and attractive to urban-farming households. It also analyzes how a PPP approach also facilitates the use of better technology, advisory support, and use of research extension activities. This paper draws on a literature review, uses remote-sensing imagery data and data from National Census Nepal 2021, and the authors’ professional experiences related to best practices in the areas to analyze the benefits and challenges related to urban farming both in Nepal and Arizona, USA. The paper provides recommendations for Nepali cities to maximize the benefit provided by urban farming. It is expected to be useful to Nepali policymakers, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations which promote sustainability, and organic farming with a sustainable supply chain.

Military Intelligence in Support of EU Missions and Operations: Bridging the Strategic Vulnerability Gap

The broad range of European Union (EU) missions and operations sets out the requirement of strategic awareness and situational assessments for effective fulfillment of operational tasks in the areas of EU-led activities. Building on the concept of coercive isomorphism, this article argues that intelligence support for common security and defense policy activities has been limited and contentious because of the vulnerability gap caused by patterns enforced by member states. Priority for national interests and assets hinders the logic of reciprocity. It lowers the value of synergetic links between the intelligence services of member states and relevant EU agencies and bodies. Regardless of numerous obstacles and limitations, the strategic vulnerability gap has been slowly bridged thanks to the development and implementation of more reliable mechanisms of intelligence cooperation within the EU.

Issue segmentation by public agencies: Assessing communication strategies of EU agencies related to Covid‐19

AbstractAn agency's self‐portrayal can help to protect its jurisdictional turf and strengthen its reputational uniqueness. While prior reputational studies have shown that agencies are attentive to the media and political principals, they have not assessed how inter‐agency dynamics might shape their public outreach and message. This paper argues that if multiple public agencies are confronted with a shared salient issue, such as the Covid‐19 pandemic, they engage in ‘issue segmentation’: mindful of each other's distinct jurisdictional and reputational profiles, their communication centers around sub‐issues that do not overlap with core missions of other agencies. We assess this expectation via a study of Twitter communication of 38 European Union agencies related to Covid‐19. Using an automated thematic analysis of tweets, we show that agencies engage in issue segmentation and focus on unique sub‐issues. The findings contribute to a better understanding of public outreach of agencies in times of crisis.

Candidate Countries’ Engagement with European Union Agencies – Alternative Modes of EU Integration?

ABSTRACT Decentralized EU agencies have played an important role in the Union’s institutional landscape over the last three decades. Various engagement logics and types of cooperation have previously been investigated for the European Economic Area and EU Eastern Partnership countries, but not for the five countries that received EU candidate status by 2021—Turkey and four Western Balkans countries—Montenegro, Serbia, Albania, and Northern Macedonia. Covering the period between 1999 and 2021 analysis found that 23 out of 34 agencies observed had some type of engagement with these candidates, while serving both EU’s broader foreign policy interests and advancing the sector-specific alignment of candidates. This also suggests that it is possible to frame these engagements as a form of external EU differentiation.

Translating One Health knowledge across different institutional and political contexts in Europe

BackgroundImplementing a One Health approach is complex. It demands engaging different sectors and actors in the promotion and protection of human, animal and environmental health. A key challenge for successfully implementing the One Health approach are knowledge translation processes among scientists and policy-makers.MethodsAn online survey reached 104 experts from 23 European countries, working at national agencies or institutes, universities, ministries, non-governmental organisations (World Health Organization, World Organisation for Animal Health), and European Union (EU) agencies. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were conducted to describe experts’ perceptions.ResultsThis study indicated a lack of networks among scientists and between scientists and policy-makers. Relations of scientists and policy-makers were perceived as challenging due to different interests and priorities, leading to difficulties in reaching political attention for One Health topics. It also highlighted a favoured attention to some One Health topics (e.g. antimicrobial resistance) as opposed to others (e.g. environmental issues). Important international actors to push One Health policies forward were the Quadripartite organisations and EU agencies. National actors (government agencies, national research institutes, universities) were on average perceived to be more important than international actors due to their roles and influences. Factors influencing the knowledge translation process were the different languages spoken by scientists as well as politicians, and an equivocal understanding of the One Health approach.ConclusionThe study shows the importance of leadership to establish interdisciplinary networks and to problematise One Health issues with clear scope and targets. This will help to link knowledge to needs and capabilities of policy-makers. Establishing strong relationships among national and international actors can encourage networks and raise awareness of the One Health approach to policy-makers. Lastly, promoting research communication skills of scientists can provide a valuable tool to reach policy-makers to enhance attention to One Health topics.

Fragmented Transparency: The Visibility of Agency Science in European Union Risk Regulation

AbstractResponding to mistrust in the European agencies’ risk assessments in politically salient cases, the European Union (EU) legislator, the European Food Safety Authority and the European Medicines Agency alike have accelerated their efforts to foster EU regulatory science transparency. These simultaneous endeavours have, however, taken place in a fragmented legislative and administrative context, with each agency operating under a different legal framework. By focusing on authorisation procedures, from registration of studies to authorisation of novel foods, pesticides and human medicines, this article examines the resulting regimes governing the disclosure of scientific data by EU agencies to identify common trends and sectoral specificities. Against the background of an overall shift towards enhanced transparency, we shed light on, first, the circulation of institutional arrangements and practices among agencies and, second, the new dimensions of transparency emerging from these developments. We also highlight the remaining sectoral differences and argue that they could have potentially large impacts on the amount and type of information disclosed and on the level of transparency perceived by stakeholders and citizens. We argue that more coherence across the sectoral transparency regimes is needed, in particular in light of the agencies’ contested legitimacy and of their increasing cooperation on cross-cutting issues like antimicrobial resistance and medicine and pesticide residues in food.

Differentiated participation, uniform procedures: EU agencies in direct policy implementation

European Union (EU) institutions have become increasingly involved in direct policy implementation in the member states, creating a new domain of differentiation in EU governance. What brings about such differentiation, and how does it vary across policy fields? Drawing on theories of differentiated integration, this article argues that differentiated implementation occurs at the intersection of postfunctional obstacles (politicisation) and functional pressures for joint implementation (interdependence). There are two identified dimensions of direct implementation, a territorial one referring to states’ participation in such activities, and a procedural one capturing the degree of uniformity in the guidelines for organising implementation. The resulting typology is applied to direct implementation activities (DIAs) conducted by EU agencies alongside national authorities. The qualitative analysis reveals that differentiated participation is a stable feature of DIAs in politicised fields, and although there is a tendency to create more uniform procedures over time and across policy fields, higher uniformity prevails under symmetric interdependence.

Turkey's Influence as a Third Country on the European Union: From Association to a Key Partner

AbstractTurkey represents a unique case for the European Union (EU) as a third country. Turkey's long standing institutionalized association with the EU furnished Turkey with formal and informal access to the EU. These access points, together with its structural power and bilateral relations with Member States shape the modalities of its influence. This article proposes that Turkish influence as a third country evolved with the interplay of its access to EU institutions and structural power. Turkey has different modes of access to EU which range from formal institutions and EU Agencies to its bilateral relations and its membership in institutions such as NATO. The article's empirical discussions identify how Turkey's influence as a third country on the EU policies is driven by this interplay of access and power, uncovering its role in different policy areas. Finally, Turkey's influence is visible in setting precedents for the EU's relations with other third countries.

Neither opaque nor transparent: A transdisciplinary methodology to investigate datafication at the EU borders

In 2020, the European Union announced the award of the contract for the biometric part of the new database for border control, the Entry Exit System, to two companies: IDEMIA and Sopra Steria. Both companies had been previously involved in the development of databases for border and migration management. While there has been a growing amount of publicly available documents that show what kind of technologies are being implemented, for how much money, and by whom, there has been limited engagement with digital methods in this field. Moreover, critical border and security scholarship has largely focused on qualitative and ethnographic methods. Building on a data feminist approach, we propose a transdisciplinary methodology that goes beyond binaries of qualitative/quantitative and opacity/transparency, examines power asymmetries and makes the labour of coding visible. Empirically, we build and analyse a dataset of the contracts awarded by two European Union agencies key to its border management policies – the European Agency for Large-Scale Information Systems (eu-LISA) and the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex). We supplement the digital analysis and visualisation of networks of companies with close reading of tender documents. In so doing, we show how a transdisciplinary methodology can be a device for making datafication ‘intelligible’ at the European Union borders.

Spreading the word? European Union agencies and social media attention

Public agencies need to distribute information to their manifold audience quickly and directly. The emergence of social media platforms has sparked positive projections about future government-public interactions via the internet and almost every EU agency has created social media presences on the leading social media platforms. However, social media accounts of agencies receive strongly varying amounts of public attention and therefore display varying degrees of usefulness to connect with the public. This research examines which factors influence how much long-standing and temporal attention social media accounts of EU agencies receive. Using an extensive Twitter dataset of EU agencies and a new methodology that employs supervised text classification through the novel BERT language model to classify agency tweets, possible explanations of social media attention are tested. Results show that long-standing social media attention (i.e., size of the followership) is mostly explained by salience in traditional news, account age, and tweeting frequency, whilst a more interactive communication style tends to yield more temporal attention (i.e., number of retweets). The findings underline previous assumptions that employing a more interactive communication style maximizes public organizations' potential to connect with their audiences on social media.

Opening Pandora’s Box? Joint Sovereignty and the Rise of EU Agencies with Operational Tasks

This article problematises the proliferation of European Union (EU) agencies with operational tasks as a new phenomenon capturing the exercise of joint sovereignty in European integration. While joint decision-making has been a feature of EU politics for decades, joint sovereignty is a broader category that additionally involves the creation of EU bodies able to intervene ‘on the ground’ alongside national public actors. We argue that the choice for joint sovereignty opens a Pandora’s box of implementation deficiencies which undermine the ability of both national and supranational actors to conduct operational activities effectively. We subsequently identify two frequent dysfunctions in policy implementation and connect them to ambiguity and conflict at the decision-making stage. Empirically, we illustrate the systemic link between decision-making and implementation problems in the functioning of two agencies with operational tasks active in the fields of border management (Frontex) and police cooperation (Europol).

Legal principles of cooperation between Ukraine and the European Union in law enforcement

The article examines the legal basis of Ukraine’s cooperation with the European Union in the field of law enforcement, identifies its main areas. It is pointed out that the constant interaction between the EU institutions and law enforcement agencies of Ukraine is extremely important at the present stage and contributes to the active fight against transnational crime. The main focus is on Ukraine’s cooperation with EU agencies aimed at combating transnational crime, including the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol), the European Organization for Justice (Eurojust), the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at External Borders. Of the European Union (Frontex). The main agreements on the basis of which the relevant EU and Ukrainian agencies cooperate are analyzed. It is established that the main areas of cooperation between Europol and Ukraine are the exchange of expertise, general information, results of strategic analysis, information on criminal investigation procedures, information on crime prevention methods, advice and support in individual criminal investigations. An important area of cooperation between Ukraine and Eurojust is the exchange of data, the establishment of joint investigation teams, and the provision of expert and practical support for their activities. The European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the EU Member States together with the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine combats illegal migration and cross-border crime through border controls, promotes security at the borders between EU member states and Ukraine. It was concluded that Ukraine needs to deepen cooperation between European Union agencies in order to effectively combat crime.

Analysis of the survey results on EU Agencies operational activities related to the COVID‐19 pandemic

The European Union Agencies Network on Scientific Advice (EU-ANSA) supports the cooperation between those European Agencies that provide scientific advice on various areas to European Institutions, for the benefit of European citizens. This report presents the results of a questionnaire that investigated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the operational activities of the EU Agencies. The aim of the survey was to identify any potential challenges faced by the Agencies in fulfilling their tasks and responsibilities during the pandemic, and to explore opportunities that the Network could provide to support its Agencies with delivering the scientific, evidence-based advice for policy making in times of crisis. Learning from the COVID-19 experience, this report provides recommendations to prepare for future emergencies through coordinated collaboration among EU-ANSA Members and strengthening preparedness of Agencies for crisis situations.

Krisengetriebene Integrationsdynamiken – eine neofunktionalistische Erklärung des zunehmenden Schutzes öffentlicher Gesundheit durch die Europäische Union

The COVID-19 pandemic and previous cross-border health crises have fostered European integration. The article provides a neofunctionalist explanation of the medium- to long-term deepening of the European Union (EU) in the field of public health protection and identifies as a pattern of crisis-driven integration a tight link between health crises and the establishment and strengthening of EU agencies. The European Commission is the central driving force in times of crisis which is exemplified by analysing the area of European health technology assessment and the development towards a health union as a reaction to the COVID-19 crisis. The short term is characterised by recurring standstill and watering down of reform proposals that follow an intergovernmental logic. Still, crises contribute to the choice of critical paths unleashing functional integration dynamics in a long-term perspective.