Agencies of the European Union

The agencies of the European Union (formally: Agencies, decentralised independent bodies, corporate bodies and joint undertakings of the European Union and the Euratom) are bodies of the European Union and the Euratom established as juridical persons through secondary EU legislation and tasked with a specific narrow field of work.

They are distinct from:

• international law juridical persons established through primary (treaty) legislation, either as an EU institution (the European Central Bank) or an EU body of other type (such as the European Investment Bank Group entities, the European University Institute, the European Stability Mechanism or the Unified Patent Court)
• other EU institutions
• other EU bodies lacking juridical personality, including the advisory bodies, the independent offices held by a single person (European Ombudsman, European Data Protection Supervisor), and the (non-independent, auxiliary) EU inter-institutional services, regardless whether established through treaty or secondary legislation
• the pan-EU organisational forms which are not considered constituent bodies of the EU or the Euratom, regardless whether possessing juridical personality (European Research Infrastructure Consortium, European political party, European political foundation, European grouping of territorial cooperation, Societas Europaea, Societas Cooperativa Europaea) or lacking it (European economic interest grouping)