Comparable shortcomings and lack of progress in finding workable governance structures also typified other EU policies. Some areas – such as the management of EMU – have continued to suffer from politicised reporting, lack of transparency regarding the decisions taken within the Commission, and continued complaints about lack of ownership for reforms on the part of the member states (Gros and Schout 2023).

In other policy areas deep-seated problems were addressed and profound changes were implemented. Successful areas include the creation of a market for medicines, the opening-up of national aviation markets, European competition policy, monitoring the state of the environment in member states, and food safety. Compared to cohesion policy, these areas were no less technically complex, nor of less economic or political importance. The field of air safety was dominated by national carriers (economic giants and, like KLM, Lufthansa and AirFrance: protected national flagships). Food safety was especially sensitive given the many health and economic consequences, and frictions related to national traditions (from the use of fertilisers to quality standards of sausages and cheese). Food safety in the EU even resulted in major crises such as the BSE crisis. After profound reforms of food safety standards and network-based inspections, the high quality of EU food standards is now the basis of a successful European food industry with competitive advantages in global trade.[34]

What these areas have in common is that they are governed on the basis of subsidiarity-based networks with independent EU agencies at their core. The EU agencies have been kept relatively small and work on the basis of permanent structured cooperation within the networks of independent national agencies. Whereas networks in cohesion are informal and rely on soft coordination, these networks are well organised and share in rule-making, inspections and reporting. Supervision is governed through team-based auditing of each other’s qualities and work, reports are written using capacities from within the network so that knowledge is accumulated collectively, and reports are generally publicly available. Follow-up from evaluations is facilitated by a common professional culture and the clarity for member states that inspection reports will be public. As a result, member states have incentives to take actions before reports are made public. The experts in the networks collectively formulate their operating rules (‘integrative bargaining’) instead of rules being hierarchically formulated in political negotiations in comitology committees. The rules concern for example methodologies for data gathering and processing, procedures for doing on-site visits, transparency of information, and follow-up procedures.

These networks also affect the ways in which the Commission works. Data gathering and analysis of trends are put at arms-length. Reports from the agencies are generally publicly available putting the Commission in the position of ‘comply-or-explain'. Evidently, the Commission is responsible for taking actions when member states fail to deliver. If the reports from the network signal sustained problems in a member state, the Commission will have to explain why not more pressure is exerted. The Commission still has room for maneuver, but it will be more transparent on what basis the Commission takes its decisions.

An explanation for why EU governance was redirected towards subsidiarity-based multilevel governance is that these policy areas had run into crisis situations. Liberalisation of air traffic implied that the traditional state-dominated national carriers had to be replaced by independent aviation authorities certifying and controlling planes, airports, and maintenance systems. The European food safety agency was created after several food crises (BSE, chicken dioxin). The European environment agency was needed because national environmental monitoring systems differed in major ways, and there was no basis with the system that existed to pursue a viable European environment policy. Enlargement forced a drastic reform including the creation and involvement of national environmental agencies.

The question now is to what extent further Eastward enlargement, the incorporation of the financial needs of Ukraine, and the new demands on EU finances due to changes in the EU’s strategic priorities, will act as a crisis to reform cohesion policy and its governance.