ABSTRACT
Scholars who studied accession processes have dedicated some attention to the agencification of candidate countries for the purpose of European integration, but they have done so from two different perspectives. In fact, "international actors have been particularly important in making anticorruption agencies become a norm". In Europe, OECD, the Council of Europe and the European Union have all insisted on the need to set up agencies to fight corruption, in particular in candidate countries. The set-up of an European integrity or anticorruption agency could be justified also by the fact that almost all member states and not only candidate or third countries now display integrity agencies and/or agencies meant to fight against corruption. In fact, the only effect that national accountability agencies managed to have on the EU consists in allowing for weak accountability mechanisms at the supranational level, while at the national level the EU has constantly required stronger agencies.
