The Competence-Control Dilemma and the Institutional Design of EU Agencies

How do EU legislators balance between EU agencies’ functional need for competences and their preference for control over EU agencies? EU agencies functional usefulness rests on their ability to perform tasks independently. At the same time, this independence reduces principals’ ability to control. The decision between competence and control is not a one-off decision, but EU principals reconfigure it over time. We employ a dataset that measures EU agencies formal independence over time across two dimensions. We argue that different aspects of formal independence create different incentives for EU agencies to develop de facto competences. First, the independence of decision-makers creates incentives for the agency to develop epistemic competence. Second, the independence of agency decision-making creates incentives to develop institutional capacities to use this decision-making independence. In this paper, we take EU agencies’ formal independence as a proxy to gauge both the control principals desire to exert and the incentives for EU agencies to develop competences: Higher levels of independence on a dimension implies that principals prioritise competence over control on this dimension and vice-versa. Our dataset measures EU agencies’ formal independence over time on 206 legal documents. It allows us to systematically trace all changes in formal independence over time. We show that principals indeed customise EU agencies’ independence to their competence and control needs. Moreover, we can illustrate that there has been development over time but that it is likewise driven by idiosyncratic, policy-field specific competence and control requirements. However, agencies’ tasks seem to be an important independent variable explaining the specific balance. Overall, our analysis of EU agencies’ formal independence shows how EU principals readjust the balance between competence and control. Thereby, our paper provides insights into the practical repercussions of the competence-control dilemma and into the drivers behind the increasing scope of EU agencification.