The Juncker Commission, Perception and Impact. Assessing the ‘Political Commission’ in Theory and Practice

As candidate Commission President and indeed throughout his Presidency, Jean-Claude Juncker styled his administration the ‘political Commission’. This paper examines President Juncker’s motivation for this characterisation, what he intended by the particular framing, and the circumstances that made it possible, and considers how the ‘political Commission’ was operationalised in the form of ‘the new ways of working’. The paper reflects on the internal and inter-institutional impact, perceptions, consequences and legacy of the ‘political Commission’ in terms of the presidential leadership it embodied and the definition of the Commission’s functions within the EU system that it implied. Building on, but going far beyond Kassim and Laffan (2019), it draws on responses to an online survey (n=6,500) and programme of interviews (n=200+) conducted as part of a major research project on the Commission in 2018-19, as well as interviews in the Council and the European Parliament.