Agencification Entrenched: Interpreting the New Pact on Migration and Asylum through the Lens of Resource Expansion without Mandates

This paper critically examines the expanded roles of Frontex, the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA) and EU-LISA under the 2024 Pact on Migration and Asylum, drawing on an analytical framework of "resource expansion without mandates." (Moutselos 2025). The Pact enhances the operational capacities of EU agencies introducing new responsibilities in border screening, returns, asylum harmonisation, crisis response, and inter-agency data sharing/interoperability; however, it continues the pattern whereby agencies remain without formal decision-making authority. This expansion reinforces their technical and performative legitimacy but leaves legal-procedural and moral accountability unresolved. The paper highlights how this agencification serves a legitimacy-implementation compromise, enabling Member States to delegate contentious operational tasks (e.g., fast-track returns, vulnerability assessments) to agencies without ceding sovereign control or facing full accountability for outcomes, particularly regarding fundamental rights. The Pact’s emphasis on solidarity mechanisms, responsibility offsets, and third-country cooperation allows agencies to buffer inter-state conflicts without altering the underlying preferences and power asymmetries among Member States. Furthermore, although the Pact strengthens fundamental rights monitoring in principle, it fails to address structural accountability gaps in cases where agencies depend on Member State cooperation to oversee rights protections effectively. Consequently, the reforms under the New Pact entrench an “expansion without mandates” model (Moutselos 2025), solidifying the agencies' role as technocratic facilitators of EU migration governance while shielding national governments from direct accountability. This perpetuates the Common European Asylum System's (CEAS) core contradictions, prioritising operational efficiency over legal coherence and rights compliance.