Next to Member States, European Union (EU) level organisations have come to play a larger role in enforcement in the EU during the last two decades. Analysing the roles of Member States, networks of national authorities and EU agencies in this stage of the policy cycle through multiple academic lenses could lead to a more comprehensive understanding and assessment of their design. This article sets elementary steps towards a framework that brings together prominent theoretical insights from the legal and political disciplines, to discuss their combined leverage for understanding the EU legislator's choice for these enforcement regimes.