Recontracting Independence – When Do Legislators Adapt EU Agencies’ Formal Independence?

EU agencies’ formal mandates are regularly amended or revised. The EU has founded 39 EU agencies since 1975 and has reformed their mandate in 167 instances. In some instances, these reforms affect the formal independence of EU agencies, in others legislators only adapt other aspects of EU agencies’ mandates. This paper examines under which conditions legislators change existing de jure independence of EU agency in this process. Using a dataset of all agency reforms over the last five decades, this paper explores in a first step under which conditions EU agencies gain or lose independence in reforms. We thereby test both rationalist and isomorphic approaches against the null hypothesis of incremental path dependency in EU agency independence. In a second step, we conduct a comparative case study analysis to further probe the identified causal mechanisms by focusing only on those agencies, that experienced substantial changes in their independence. Formal independence is both an important justification for the establishment of government agencies from a functional perspective and a significant concern from an accountability perspective. Our study reveals whether the EU’s political system allows agency principals to engage in re-mandating when the expectations regarding independence in the delegation process does not match with developments after the delegation.