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Evaluation of the EU decentralised agenciesOn-going debates involving the Council, the EU Parliament, and the Commission regarding the impact, relevance and future of the EU agency system led to the Commission’s request for this extensive evaluation. |  |
Since the proposal for an improvement and harmonisation of the governance of the EU “agency system” in 2005, which could not reach the decision stage, rapidly growing resources were continuously devoted to the EU decentralised agencies. This raised concerns about the budgetary impact and the relevance of the agency model leading to a number of studies on the decentralized agencies, including several parliamentary studies, a special report of the Court of Auditors, and a meta-evaluation by the Commission. In this context, the Commission committed itself to launching a thorough evaluation of the agency system, which was awarded to the consortium led by Ramboll Management Consulting in cooperation with the French and British partners, Euréval and Matrix.
The evaluation was extensive and based on substantial field work, including visits to all 26 agencies in all corners of Europe, down to Heraklion, through Parma, and up to Helsinki. The purpose of the assignment was to evaluate aspects such as: the relevance of the agencies’ creation; the relevance of their activities to the Union’s work; principles of good governance in the supervision of the agencies; coherence between activities and objectives of the different agencies and with EU policy objectives; efficiency and cost-effectiveness in carrying out activities; and the adequacy of the monitoring mechanisms for assessing performance.
The insights gained from the evaluation activities were meant to help in shaping a future common framework for EU regulatory agencies through recommendations and the formulation of future options. As such, the evaluation provided an important input into the works of the inter-institutional working group launched in 2009 with an aim to reflect on the future of EU agencies.
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