The coordinating role of EU agencies in transboundary crisis management

The transboundary nature of the different crises that the EU faces requires clear leaderships in their management and resolution. As part of the EU institutional architecture, the technical mandate of EU agencies (EUAs) endows them with the legitimacy to exert a leading role in the response to these challenges across member states. In light of this situation, the agencies’ leadership can be central in the efforts to coordinate a wide array of actors. Coordination implies the identification of key partners while facilitating coherence in their actions, not necessarily collaboration between them. Against this backdrop, the present article seeks to explore the capacity of EU agencies to formally or informally coordinate responses aiming to manage transboundary crisis. The study is based on a survey to management board members in 33 decentralized agencies regarding the formal and informal forms of coordination placed when a crisis has been detected. Based on the literature on EU agencies and transboundary crisis management in the EU, the article contributes to the identification of strengths and weaknesses in the coordinating capacities of agencies. The exploratory approach of the study sheds light on how different perceptions of threat and urgency reach agencies’ leaders when a crisis arises and how, from here, they establish different forms of horizontal and vertical coordination vis-à-vis stakeholders, other agencies, member states and EU institutions.