Source: European Parliament
Evaluations of decentralised agencies are conducted as required by the agencies’ establishment acts adopted by the co-legislators. Agencies’ activities are evaluated in terms of relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, and EU added value. The scope for synergies between decentralised agencies is also assessed.
The evaluations are conducted by independent evaluators consulting all relevant stakeholders, including the main beneficiaries/users (often Member States and national authorities), the agencies’ Management Board representatives, external experts, international counterparts, and the Commission.
Decentralised agencies’ governance is set out in the 2012 Common Approach[1]. They are autonomous EU bodies managed by an Executive Director and a Management Board which is composed of Member States’ representatives, the Commission and in some cases stakeholder representatives. The Commission only has a limited number of votes in the Management Board (usually one — two votes) and has no veto right.
Ten decentralised agencies also have small Executive Boards, which oversee the application of audit results and support the administrative and budgetary management.
The Commission systematically proposes to the co-legislators to introduce such Executive Boards for all new decentralised agencies.
The Commission monitors each decentralised agency’s budgetary implementation as well as financial and human resource needs and proposes resource adjustments to the budgetary authority in the annual budget procedure, whenever justified and possible.
Moreover, the discharge of the decentralised agencies’ annual budget is granted by the European Parliament, upon recommendation by the Council.
To achieve synergies, the Commission proposes, when appropriate, to merge agencies or to harbour new tasks in an existing agency instead of creating a standalone agency or to link a new small agency to a big one to rely on the support departments of the latter.
The Commission proposes the creation of a new standalone agency only when the new activities are too large or different for one of the above options to be viable.
The Commission also presents in detail to the co-legislators the budgetary and staffing needs related to a proposal to create — or expand the mandate of — an agency[2].
- [1] Joint statement of the European Parliament, the Council of the EU and the European Commission on decentralised agencies including the annexed Common Approach of 19 July 2012 (https://european-union.europa.eu/document/download/d4199ff4-1e3d-45e6-af7e-90cf1a7b10bc_en?filename=joint_statement_on_decentralised_agencies_en.pdf).
- [2] In line with the requirement of Article 35 of the Financial Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2024/2509 (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:L_202402509) and Article 27 of the Interinstitutional Agreement of 16 December 2020 (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32020Q1222(01)).