Delegation of powers in the European union: The need for a multi-principals model

Whereas a principal-agent model has widely been used to analyse the establishment of manifold autonomous agencies at the European level, it fails to capture some key elements of this process, such as the recurrent inter-institutional struggle of agency institutional design or the Commission's basic ambivalence vis-a-vis independent regulators. In contrast, acknowledging the absence of a clearly defined principal in the EU enables us to understand the relative weakness of existing agencies and the multiplicity of controls to which they are subjected. In such a system, strong EU regulators are unlikely to be established.