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The article discusses the rationale and ways of functioning of the European Green Deal (EGD) project, launched by the Commission in December 2019 and developed through a variety of measures ranging from the European Climate Law to the "Fit for 55" package. After situating the EGD in the context of the European multidimensional crisis, the article focuses on the EGD's objectives and its instruments. It is argued that the EGD may be interpreted as a highly ambitious but still fragile regulatory project that aims at managing a transition from one phase of the European integration process to another. Its ambivalent relationship with existing international initiatives in the field of climate change is explored in the last part of the article.
European Green Deal, EGD, European Climate Law, Fit for 55 package, multidimensional crisis, transition, European integration, climate change, environmental protection, NGEU

AbstractThe European responses to the financial and public debt crisis have triggered a process of administrative reorganisation and growth in the governance of the internal market in financial services and economic and monetary union. Such a process is characterised by four main tensions, referring respectively to: the powers conferred on the satellite administrative bodies established in order to tackle the crisis; the jurisdictions of the new administrations; the degree of centralisation which is sought within the new mechanisms for the implementation of EU laws and policies; and to the accountability mechanisms. The effects of such tensions are deeply ambivalent. On the one hand, they might operate as 'fault lines' within the EU administrative machinery. On the other hand, by pointing to a host of unsolved issues in EU administrative law, they provide an opportunity for opening a genuine institutional and scientific discussion on the ways in which the EU administrative system should be adjusted or reformed.

The European responses to the financial and public debt crisis have triggered a process of administrative reorganization and growth within two fundamental sectors of the EU, the internal market of financial services and the EMU. This paper argues that the process of reorganization and growth of the EU administrative machinery within the single financial market and the EMU is characterized by a number of inherent tensions. Four of them are prominent and refer, respectively, to the powers conferred to the satellite administrative bodies established in order to tackle the crisis, to the jurisdictions of the new administrations, to the degree of centralization which is sought within the new mechanisms for the implementation of EU laws and policies, to the accountability mechanisms. When assessed in the light of their capability to improve the EU administrative capacities, such tensions appear to be deeply ambivalent. On the one hand, they might operate as «fault lines» of the whole EU administrative machinery, destabilizing its functioning in two important fields of EU action. On the other hand, by pointing to a host of unsolved issues in EU administrative law, they provide an opportunity for opening a genuine institutional and scientific discussion on the ways in which the EU administrative system should be adjusted or reformed.

This paper aims at contributing to the discussion on the overall assessment of European agencies and their possible developments. For this purpose, three main questions are tackled: (i) what are the European agencies' distinguishing features that have emerged and consolidated in the almost two-decade long process of agencification in the EU legal order? (ii) how can such features be assessed and what problems do they raise? (iii) what perspectives can be envisaged in the development of the agencification process? The European agencies' distinguishing features and the problems that they raise are considered by focusing on the main aspects in which the agencification process can be analysed: namely, the organizational architecture of European agencies; the powers conferred on them; the relationships between European agencies and national administrations; the "global dimension" of the administrative networks coordinated by European agencies; the mechanisms to keep European agencies under control; the legal limits of the establishment of new European agencies (and the Meroni doctrine).
As for the possible perspectives of the agencification process in the EU legal order, building upon current institutional debates and recent reform processes, two main possible lines of development are discussed: firstly, a substantial complication of the model, due to the gradual emergence, next to the European agencies of the type consolidated so far, of a "new type" of European agencies, which are independent vis-à-vis the market and EU political institutions, including the Commission; secondly, the expansion of agencification beyond the Commission's sphere of influence and the establishment of European agencies serving European bodies other than the Commission.