This report gives an overview of the Commission’s agenda for European governance reform as set out in the White Paper of Governance adopted by the Commission in 2001, focusing on how the Commission envisages its own role in the EU decision-making process. Furthermore, it describes how a number of follow-up documents adopted by the Commission have essentially given effect to the initial recommendations and proposals set out in the White Paper.

In this report the authors discuss the proposal for a hierarchy of legal acts as that was the result from the work of the European Convention on the Future of Europe. One objective with the proposal was to reduce the number of legal instruments and give them names which are readily understandable to the public.

The aim of this report is to identify some of those features which, since they are shared by all or some of the existing agencies, are essential in order to explain their legal nature and to highlight some problems that should be addressed in the process leading up to the adoption of a new constitutional treaty. At present, the role of decentralized agencies is premised on the Court of Justice’s idea of an institutional balance of powers, requiring an EU-institution to assume full responsibility.