Distinct body 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 Euratom ) are bodies of the European Union and Euratom established as juridical persons through secondary EU legislation and tasked with a specific narrow field of work.[ 1]
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 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 )