Meta-study on decentralised agencies: cross-cutting analysis of evaluation findings

The European Parliament invited the Commission to pay special attention, inter alia, to the coherence of the Agency activity with EU policies, to the broader EU added value of agencies outputs in their respective area of activity, to the relevance of the Agency model in implementing or contributing to EU policies. In response to the Parliament, the Commission launched this meta-study in an accountability perspective with a special focus on the rationale of establishing / maintaining agencies. This study covered 25 European agencies financed by the European budget plus Europol. This meta-study was also be an input to a future evaluation of the agency system in two ways: (1) framing the evaluation questions, and (2) identifying information gaps. Moreover, the present meta-study will develop a framework enabling the Commission to report on each new agency evaluation in a harmonised way.