The EU has become increasingly involved in enforcing European Union (EU) law, including directly vis-à-vis private actors. (Multilevel implementation) research has so far neglected the question of what role it is necessary for the EU to play in this direct enforcement of EU law in order to promote the implementation of EU policies. Given the purpose of this collection of works to discuss innovative approaches in multilevel implementation, this contribution unravels three of the EU's direct enforcement strategies. It provides original data in relation to proliferating EU entities with direct enforcement powers and to EU enforcement networks, as well as discussing the EU's growing influence over national direct enforcement via EU hard, soft and case law. It outlines the problem-solving potential of such enforcement strategies and signals the challenges that they bring along. The aim is to urge and facilitate further research on the EU's (direct) enforcement strategies, their legitimacy, effectiveness and operation.
The EU has become increasingly involved in enforcing European Union (EU) law, including directly vis-à-vis private actors. (Multilevel implementation) research has so far neglected the question of what role it is necessary for the EU to play in this direct enforcement of EU law in order to promote the implementation of EU policies. Given the purpose of this collection of works to discuss innovative approaches in multilevel implementation, this contribution unravels three of the EU's direct enforcement strategies. It provides original data in relation to proliferating EU entities with direct enforcement powers and to EU enforcement networks, as well as discussing the EU's growing influence over national direct enforcement via EU hard, soft and case law. It outlines the problem-solving potential of such enforcement strategies and signals the challenges that they bring along. The aim is to urge and facilitate further research on the EU's (direct) enforcement strategies, their legitimacy, effectiveness and operation.
Although not explicitly regulated by the EU treaties, EU agencies not only exist but also have increased in number and power. In addition, while EU agencies may exercise very similar functions to those of the Commission, Articles 290 and 291 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) do not list agencies among the possible authors of non-legislative acts. The existing situation raises the questions of the extent to which the ongoing agencification in the EU is legitimate and what its limits are. This article addresses these questions in the light of the old and new Treaties and case law, including the just releasedESMA-shortsellingcase. It shows that while the Lisbon Treaty made a few steps forward on the road of legitimizing EU agencies and delegating important powers to them, the scope of powers that EU agencies can have remains unclear. In this respect, the European Court of Justice's lenient approach in theESMA-shortsellingcase is unfortunate because it neither clarifies the issue nor pushes the Union Legislator and the Member States to address it. Consequently, in the absence of clear limits, further agencification is likely to persist at the risk of increasing the democratic legitimacy deficit and remaining accountability gaps.
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