The institutional architecture of EU environmental governance: the role of EU agencies

EU environmental law and policy-making is characterised by a plurality of institutional actors. While the Commission remains a central policy-maker, EU agencies play an increasingly important role in a number of environmentally sensitive domains. Although the EEA is the decentralised agency whose mission is most evidently related to the EU environmental policy, the role of other agencies also needs to be considered. This chapter focuses on the role of EU agencies in environmental law and policy and on the way they contribute to environmental protection, by mapping the different tasks attributed to them in this respect and analysing their contribution to integrating environmental concerns in EU governance and administration.