When Policy Entrepreneurship Doesn’t Do the Trick: An Analysis of the Juncker Commission's European Agenda on Migration

The European Commission has been described as policy entrepreneur, an actor that explores (and creates) windows of opportunity in order to induce policy change. Embodying an approach of “doing less, more efficiently” the President of the Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, highlighted ten priorities on which the Commission would focus and get results. However, at the end of Juncker’s term in office, the record of the Commission is uneven. Whereas in some priorities the Commission’s action can be labelled a success, in others the Commission seems to be dragging its feet. Using process tracing as method and the concept of “policy entrepreneur” (Kingdon 1984; 2003) as theoretical framework we will look at one of Juncker’s political priorities – a new policy on migration - in order to answer one central empirical question: Which are the limits of the Commission’s policy entrepreneurship?