The primary goal of this book is to trace the European Commission's strategies of dealing with the politicisation of EU legislation. In a case study on President Jean-Claude Juncker's term of office, the authors of this volume analyse how the EU Commission set and advanced certain political priorities between 2014 and 2019. The analysis focuses on the ten political priorities which the Juncker Commission retained in all of its annual work programmes from its inception onwards, starting with its self-proclaimed role as a 'political commission'. However, this study's assessment of the 'politicisation' of integration policy is ambiguous: On the one hand, the Juncker Commission deliberately adopted politicised issues and tried to use them as opportunities for political leadership as well as to hone its own institutional profile. On the other hand, controversies and crises repeatedly forced the EU Commission to resort to damage control.

When the Juncker Commission took office five years ago, Europe had been weakened by the worst economic and social crisis since the Second World War. With waning support from citizens, President Juncker felt it was the 'last chance' for the European Union to regain trust. That is why the President was determined to take a different approach, and to build a political Commission that pays close attention to people's concerns and provides solutions. In the past five years, the European Commission has worked tirelessly to drive the European Union forward and improve citizens' lives. The Juncker Commission has strived to make Europe more social, more united, more relatable to its citizens, and more influential on the world stage. As a political Commission, it was 'big on the big things' and more modest in other areas, where it left responsibility to national and local authorities. Throughout different crises, the Commission stayed true to its values, its principles and its priorities. Today, we pass on a healthier European economy than the one we inherited. Trust in our Union and in the EU institutions is the highest it has been in 10 years. And around the world, the European Union continues to be seen as a beacon of hope, a guardian of peace, and a source of stability.

This April 2019 edition closes the cycle of the European Parliamentary Research Service's bi annual monitoring of the Juncker Commission's ten priorities. After the last plenary session of the 2014 2019 Parliament, and before the end of the European Commission's mandate, this publication provides an up-to-date overview of the state of play in the delivery of the various legislative and other political initiatives flowing from the ten priorities defined by the Commission's President, Jean-Claude Juncker, on taking office in 2014. The analysis shows that, of the 547 proposals foreseen from the Commission, 512 have been submitted (94 per cent), of which 361 have been adopted (66 per cent). There are 151 proposals (28 per cent) which have not so far been adopted, and where the outcome may depend on the EU institutional transition this year. Of these, 115 (21 per cent) have been proceeding normally through the legislative process, and 36 (7 per cent) have either been proceeding slowly or are blocked. On the eve of the 2019 European Parliament elections, the paper is intended both to assess the extent to which the Juncker Commission has met the targets that it set itself, to take note of the achievements made to date and to identify areas in which difficulties have been, or continue to be, encountered.

"This study offers a series of provisional estimations of the potential gains to the European Union economy that could be generated over time from pursuing the ten-point plan presented by Jean-Claude Juncker to the European Parliament before he was elected President of the European Commission in July 2014. It forms part of a series of studies being undertaken on the potential added value from European-level initiatives advocated in resolutions of the European Parliament. The text covers seven of the ten guidelines proposed by the Commission President, where quantification can be attempted: A deeper and fairer Internal Market with a strengthened industrial base; A connected Digital Single Market; A deeper and fairer Economic and Monetary Union; A resilient Energy Union with a forward-looking climate change policy; A reasonable and balanced Free Trade Agreement with the United State; Europe as a stronger global actor; An area of justice and fundamental rights based on mutual trust. This attempt to quantify the economic potential of the political guidelines presented by Jean-Claude Juncker, can be read in conjunction with the exercise of Mapping the Cost of Non-Europe 2014-19, which has so far been published by the European Added Value Unit in March and July 2014"--Editor.

The European Commission is at the center of the European Union's political system. Within its five-year terms each Commission proposes up to 2000 binding legal acts and therefore crucially shapes EU policy, which in turn impacts on the daily lives of more than 500 million European citizens. However, despite the Commissions key role in setting the agenda for European decision making, little is known about its internal dynamics when preparing legislation. This book provides a problem-driven, theoretically-founded, and empirically rich treatment of the so far still understudied process of position-formation inside the European Commission. It reveals that various internal political positions prevail and that the role of power and conflict inside the European Commission is essential to understanding its policy proposals. Opening the 'black box' of the Commission, the book identifies three ideal types of internal position-formation. The Commission is motivated by technocratic problem-solving, by competence-seeking utility maximization or ideologically-motivated policyseeking. Specifying conditions that favor one logic over the others, the typology furthers understanding of how the EU system functions and provides novel explanations of EU policies with substantial societal implications.