Improving compliance with European Union law via agencies: The case of the European Railway Agency

European Union agencies are increasingly used to stimulate domestic compliance with EU law, without concrete evidence for whether and how these bodies actually realize this. Through in-depth analysis of the European Railway Agency, this article enhances our empirical understanding of the working and functioning of EU agencies, and advances our thinking about compliance in international settings. It leads us to the insight that in order to be capable of stimulating domestic compliance agencies should be flexible to resort to a mix of compliance strategies in order to be able to cope with the varying domestic compliance situations.