Coordination Capacity of European Union Agencies: Coordination within EU Agencies, Coordination with National Agencies

Member states and EU institutions delegated to European Union agencies (EAs) competences to inform and/or regulate on specific policy sectors. As the literature on agencification has extensively argued, EAs were created to be independent from their political principals, in particular, from national governments. Most scholarship on agencification has been focused on examining the formal institutional design of agencies, rather than the performance of such agencies. This article aims to examine the coordination capacity of EAs agencies in two directions: within EAs and with national regulatory agencies. To do this, the article focuses on investigating  the performance of agencies’ governing structures through the analysis of the professional background of management board members and their attitudes towards their coordination mechanisms. The study relies on an original dataset on EAs’ institutional characteristics and high-ranking posts, as well as interviews with officials in selected EAs.