The Role of EU Agencies in the Acquis Transfer: The Case of the European Neighbourhood Policy Countries

Abstract

Since the mid-2000s, a large number of EU agencies became involved in transferring the EU acquis to the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) countries. EU agencies focus on the institution-building and enhancing the capacity of third countries to bring their standards closer to the EU norms. At the same time, the extent of their involvement varies across policy fields, countries, and agencies: some EU agencies have strong institutionalised ties with third states, while others establish only ad hoc cooperation. Despite their active involvement in the neighbourhood, the external dimension of EU agencies remains largely unexplored; neither do we know what explains the variance in agencies' openness to participation of third countries. The paper fills this research gap by providing a systematic mapping of the transgovernmental outreach of EU agencies to the ENP countries across different policy domains and by explaining the variance across agencies and countries. It demonstrates that the external activities of EU agencies follow the sector-specific interdependency dynamics rather than the principal foreign policy goals of the EU. Such external cooperation patterns focus on the technocratic networks and the EU regulatory state building outside its borders that goes beyond the political boundaries of the regional integration endeavours of the EU.

EU Rules Beyond its Borders: The Policy‐specific Effects of Transgovernmental Networks and EU Agencies in the European Neighbourhood

“…The sectors accounted for are: food safety (contributing agency: EFSA), environment (EEA), aviation (EASA), health (EU‐OSHA, ECDC), border control (Frontex), asylum (EASO), and police and justice (Europol, Cepol, Eurojust, EMCDDA). These seven sectors are chosen due to the active involvement of EU agencies in these policy areas (for more information, see Rimkutė and Shyrokykh, ), as well as the availability of systematic EU assessments of the ENP countries' progress in each of these policy areas (through ENP Progress Reports issued by the Commission, for instance).…”

“…There are more than 40 decentralized EU agencies and bodies involved in technical, scientific or managerial tasks that assist EU institutions in making and implementing European regulations. Half of the agencies are a part of technical co‐operation with the eastern and southern neighbours (for a detailed mapping of agencies' outreach, see Rimkutė and Shyrokykh, ). Involving agencies in technocratic co‐operation with the neighbourhood is ‘a longstanding agreed key objective of the ENP, supporting reform and convergence with EU legislation’ (European Commission, , p. 2).…”

“…The second format implies that agencies can be involved in the ENP on an ad hoc basis, such as by arranging events aimed at short‐term technical capacity building. EU agency involvement and forms of participation in the ENP vary considerably across EU agencies: some EU agencies have both ad hoc and co‐operation‐based agreements with the ENP states, while others only recently started to engage in informal ad hoc co‐operation (see Rimkutė and Shyrokykh, ). However, we know relatively little about whether and to what extent agencies' involvement affects the transfer of the EU acquis to the ENP countries.…”

“…Although limited in scope, some recent scholarly work provides early attempts to shed light on the emerging phenomenon of ‘agentification’ of the neighbourhood and the effects of EU regulatory governance in third countries (Hofmann et al ., ; Lavenex, ; Rimkutė and Shyrokykh, ). They show that various agencies become open to participation of third countries at different time points and to different extents.…”

“…The growing regulatory outreach of the EU is acknowledged in the literature examining the external governance of the EU (Lavenex, 2015;Lavenex and Schimmelfennig, 2009;Rimkutė and Shyrokykh, 2017;Shyrokykh, 2019). However, the impact of such EU engagement on the actual practices of neighbouring states remains under-researched.…”