Delegation to Supranational Institutions: Why, How, and with What Consequences?

Agents as Information Asymmetry Managers in EU Trade Policy-Making

“…Initially, principal control serves to monitor the agent's actions and preferences and thus to reduce information asymmetry in a unidirectional way: information flows from agent to principal, based on principal initiative. If an actual goal conflict is observed, control serves the additional purpose of using hierarchical power to sanction the agency slack (Tallberg 2002). If there is no goal conflict observed, principal control continues as a monitoring mechanism in view of uncertainty surrounding future preferences and actions of the agent.…”

Non-exclusive delegation to the European External Action Service

“…This cost-benefit logic is also strongly present in scholarly studies applying the principal-agent model to the case of the EU. Whether it concerns the Commission, Court of Justice, agencies, the rotating Presidency or the Council Secretariat, delegation is the result of a demand for efficiency and credibility, which the member states cannot or do not want to supply themselves (Pollack 1997(Pollack , 2003Beach 2005;Tallberg 2002Tallberg , 2006Franchino 2007;Dijkstra 2010). Not all delegation within the EU, however, follows a functional logic.…”

Enforcing the European Semester: the politics of asymmetric information in the excessive deficit and macroeconomic imbalance procedures

“…To promote the integrity of the surveillance procedure, the member states may also delegate discretionary authority to its agents, granting them some of the prerogatives of a trustee (Majone 2001;Tallberg 2002 analyzing member state budgets, to deploy its auditors to review these budgets. Third, Eurostat, the Commission's statistical agency responsible for certifying the biannual reports was greatly restrained in making country visits and precluded from conducting audits of member state accounts.…”