The European Commission in transformation: Cross-sectoral challenges, adaptation, and institutional power

Abstract

Over the past two decades, the European Commission has undergone profound transformation. Once described as a siloed technocracy operating within narrow administrative mandates, it now occupies an increasingly political, integrative, and crisis-responsive role within European Union (EU) governance. This panel investigates how the European Commission adapts as an institutional actor when confronted with cross-sectoral challenges. EU policymaking increasingly addresses complex issues that cut across established policy domains, such as climate change, social governance, macroeconomic coordination, budgetary politics, and the rule of law. The Commission responds to these challenges by adjusting both its policy outputs and its internal organisation. Cross-cutting issues create pressures to develop new organisational structures or empower select units with new functions and authority, and may potentially lead to more profound transformations of the Commission as an institutional actor. The panel brings together complementary perspectives that offer a systematic and comparative assessment of how the Commission adapts its policies, informal practices, and internal organisation in response to cross-sectoral challenges. Papers show that the Commission’s evolution is neither linear nor uniform, but characterised by sectoral experimentation, crisis-induced empowerment, and changing inter-institutional equilibria—challenging traditional accounts of EU executive politics and integration. In doing so, the panel sheds light on the evolving role of the European executive in a changing political and institutional context.

Title	Details
Greening the European Semester: scope, direction and policy implications	View Paper Details
The European Commission’s responses to slow-burning crises – identifying different types of action in the climate and the rule of law crises	View Paper Details
Who commissioners meet: Analysing external meetings in the European Commission	View Paper Details
The EU core executive and the EU multiannual budget	View Paper Details
Revised Coordination within the European Commission: Breaking up Policy Silos or Building New Bottlenecks?	View Paper Details