HISTORICAL AND LEGAL PRECONDITIONS FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF EUROPEAN UNION AGENCIES

Abstract

The article examines the historical and legal preconditions for the establishment of European Union agencies as specific administrative bodies within the EU legal order. The relevance of the topic is determined by the fact that EU agencies have become important instruments for the implementation of Union policies, although their development was not initially directly provided for by the founding treaties. The article argues that the emergence of EU agencies was caused by the gradual complication of European integration, the expansion of the internal market, the need for technical expertise, the development of regulatory policies and the search for more flexible forms of administrative governance. Special attention is paid to the early stage of agency formation in the 1970s, the new wave of agencification in the 1990s, and the transformation of agencies after the Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon Treaties. The study shows that the establishment of EU agencies was not a random institutional process but a response to functional needs of the Union. It is concluded that the historical and legal evolution of EU agencies reflects the transformation of the EU from a primarily economic community into a complex system of multilevel public administration.