The European Commission adopted in December 2012 a roadmap describing the actions to be implemented in order to help to improve the performance, governance and transparency of European agencies. The measures described in the document which fall under the responsibility of the European Commission will start to be implemented in 2013 and are to be concluded by the end of 2014.

The roadmap put forward by the European Commission will feed the measures to be implemented under the Common Approach endorsed by the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission in July 2012 in order to reform the decentralized agencies of the European Union. The main objectives set by the Commission in this roadmap are to achieve a better balance in governance, provide for greater efficiency and transparency, and ensure more consistency in the proceedings.

The actions which are considered as a priority within the Commission's roadmap in order to achieve the objectives are the prevention and management of eventual conflicts of interest which may appear in the agencies' bodies, the inclusion of key performance indicators in agencies' annual work programmes and for agencies' Executive Directors as well as the development of standard provisions to be included in agencies' host state agreements, based on existing best practice. The roadmap also provides for the development of guidelines with agencies on applying activity-based budgeting and activity-based management and the elaboration of guidelines for regular evaluations.

The Commission's roadmap describes a list of 90 actions to be taken in order to to achieve such objectives indicating the involvement of the different actors whether they be the Commission or the agencies themselves, the Council, the Parliament as well as Member States. This inventory set up in the roadmap will be one of the instruments for the correct implementation of the Common Approach, together with the review of the founding acts of the agencies. The Commission will also ensure that the adoption of any legal text, such as the Staff Regulation, is in line with the provisions of the Common Approach and that it contributes to its implementation.