It could have been a lot worse.
When Jean-Claude Juncker presented the 10 priorities for his European Commission presidency in July 2014, he described his five-year term as the European Union’s “last chance saloon.” Sure enough, it wasn’t long before he was plunged into crisis; 2015 saw another contentious Greek bailout, a fundamental strain to the bloc’s cohesion as more than a million refugees arrived by boat and the start of a new wave of terror attacks.
By the summer of 2016, after the British voted to leave the EU, Juncker was battling what one EU official described as “a real f––k-the-Commission” mood. His presidency — if he resisted pressure to resign — was set to be remembered for the loss of the United Kingdom and even possibly the collapse of the Schengen visa-free travel area or the euro.
The Brexit vote proved to be Juncker’s low-water mark. Today, Greece is on the road to recovery. Migrants are still arriving but in fewer numbers. The EU27 are (for now) united on Brexit. A once ascendant populist uprising has been put down in series of national elections. The eurozone has grown for 17 quarters in a row, and unemployment is back to 2009 levels.
Call it grading on a curve. When Juncker arrived in office there was no flailing British prime minister or extremist Polish government to compare him to. His undisciplined summit antics and big mouth once elicited titters and umbrage; now they produce only yawns in the shadow of U.S. President Donald Trump.
For a man who lacks many of the basic tools of statecraft — a treasury, an army, or wide-ranging executive power — it was never going to be easy to marshal the discipline and ideas needed to get the whole EU thriving again. But somehow, just by surviving to witness the EU’s turnaround, Juncker looks almost like a success.
Halfway through what Juncker says will be his only term as Commission president, here’s POLITICO’s report card.
Mastering the bureaucratic machine (B)
Critics refer to Juncker’s centralized approach to running the Commission as the “Ho Chi Minh school of management” and fret about demoralized staff. His achievements are racking up regardless.
The European Parliamentary Research Service concluded that Juncker’s team has already delivered 80 percent of all the proposals it promised in the 2014-2019 period. Juncker’s team has withdrawn 109 legislative proposals, repealed 48 existing laws and undertaken 137 regulatory simplifications. Though the mountain of EU rules continues to grow, it’s slowed significantly. On areas outside the Commission’s tradition purview, like security and defense, “We’ve done more in six months than in the last 60 years, that’s all him,” said one senior Commission official.
“People used to laugh when he talked about European defense and he’s done it,” said Ann Mettler, the head of the European Political Strategy Center, the Commission’s internal think tank.
In addition to Mettler’s think tank, Juncker has built teams that cut across policy areas — like Michel Barnier’s Brexit task force and a Structural Reform Support Service — to tackle the EU’s most complicated challenges.
Delivering on his 10 priorities (B-)
Like a stump speech or the Powerpoint slide of a management consultant seeking to “measure success,” Juncker’s go-to personal benchmark is his list of 10 political priorities. Juncker tied his name to efforts to boost investment, and so far more than half of the €315 billion Juncker Investment Plan has been delivered (the legislation that enabled the plan was pushed through the EU system in just five months, compared to an average of about three years). Painfully birthed trade deals with Japan, Canada and Ukraine, and midwifing the Paris climate agreement are notable successes.
That’s the good news. Is there a single market for the digital world, or the EU’s massive services sector? No. Did the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership happen? No, it flopped disastrously.
Personal discipline (D-)
“Juncker is Juncker” is a familiar refrain. The president’s tendency to be “extremely authentic,” in the words of one official, can be both headline-grabbing and self-defeating.
While his antics can’t compete with President Trump’s trigger-happy tweeting fingers, few observers describe Juncker as statesmanlike. One critic, a diplomat, says Juncker “doesn’t like to deal with people he doesn’t like” but admits “the EU isn’t a state and [former European Council President] Herman Van Rompuy was not a statesman either.”
Juncker rarely visits Central and Eastern Europe, opening himself to accusations he favors Western Europe over other EU members.
Stealing the spotlight (B)
National leaders have tended to choose Commission presidents who won’t challenge them too much. By that standard José Manuel Barroso was a resounding success. But with Juncker they failed: he calls them out in private and in public.
Juncker’s Commission is more functional as a team than Barroso’s was. It has double the number of national political heavyweights (eight former prime ministers and deputy prime ministers), and with its new structure of vice presidents leading teams of policy-based commissioners, it has been able to present a more unified narrative. Professor Hussein Kassim, an expert on Commissions past and present, credits him with delivering a political transformation of the institution.
While European Council President Donald Tusk has won plaudits for his blunt speeches and letters, Juncker has higher name recognition and is better-liked than his predecessor Barroso, and he retains a clear power advantage over the European Parliament presidency.
The Brexit referendum (F)
Juncker was persona non grata in the U.K. ahead of the 2016 EU referendum. As a helpless bystander to a vote that almost led to his resignation and threatened major structural damage to the EU, there are no points for Juncker here. The blame is not Juncker’s alone. A lifeless “Remain” campaign struggled to fertilize political soil left barren by 30 years of misleading information and weak British leadership when it came to the European Union.
EU law enforcement (D)
Juncker has little to do with the Commission’s most high-profile enforcement efforts: its €13 billion decision against Ireland and Apple, its assaults on Google and Gazprom. Those are handled by Commisioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager, and barely touch Juncker’s desk.
While Juncker is not afraid to send EU governments to court — the Commission has 674 open cases against its members — his biggest test is the behavior of Warsaw and Budapest. Brussels has so far been ineffective in taking Poland and Hungary to task for defying EU decisions and toying with the rights of their citizens.
Juncker has few pleasant options. Any attempt to strip Warsaw of EU voting rights will almost certainly be neutered by Budapest. But if he doesn’t try, he will face accusations of weakness on what some argue is the biggest threat facing the EU.
Eurozone and Greece bailout (A-)
Juncker staked a great deal of political capital on saving Greece’s economy and its place in the eurozone, including via a personal relationship with Greece’s left-wing prime minister, Alexis Tsipras. It’s paying off. Many tens of billions of euros and leaders’ summits later, the third bailout is, in the end, working and the eurozone has survived intact. In fact, the currency bloc has now grown for 17 consecutive quarters.
The continuing migration crisis (C)
Resentment lingers not far below the surface in the diplomatic and government circles of Eastern Europe. “To him, we are nuisance gypsies,” complained one Hungarian official, who believes that Juncker cared much more about the eurozone and siding with Angela Merkel in 2015 than preserving unity across all 28 members of the EU. Juncker’s team rejects that criticism. One official said: “There is only one person who can stand up to Angela Merkel. And he does.” The Commission believes its refugee relocation and resettlement system is finally a success and may expand it in coming months.
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Jobs and unemployment (B)
Unemployment rates (a national responsibility) are falling, but they remain stubbornly high. Meanwhile, Juncker elegantly defused two political bombs in 2017 on employment issues he does control. He punted political showdowns over Uber’s right to operate in Europe until after the French and German elections. And he managed to prevent disagreements over the Posted Workers Directive (which manages how workers can be sent abroad on local pay) from producing giant ruptures at EU leadership summits.
One Eastern European diplomat dismissed the latter achievement as a “blatant disregard for freedom of movement of labor.” But even he might be thankful that it’s French President Emmanuel Macron — not Marine Le Pen — who is taking the issue forward. Macron might be taking credit for a position the Commission drew up, but that’s a good problem to have. Uber’s fate remains in the hands of judges, despite the objections of some commissioners who wanted the EU to defend the company’s single market rights, if not its controversial corporate culture.
Setting the new European narrative (TBD)
Turning EU leaders toward a positive agenda after Brexit is Juncker’s great (and incomplete) achievement. That started with behind-the-scenes work, in parallel to Donald Tusk, to put on a show of unity at the September 2016 Bratislava summit. The real turning point came via a “Future of Europe” paper published in March, in which Juncker avoided laying out his own vision of Europe and chose instead to tell hard truths about the EU’s choices in the face of Brexit and globalization.
“Everyone was waiting for a single scenario that they could criticize, and he didn’t buy into that,” said Mettler. That allowed the Commission to avoid its perennial role as political scapegoat. Now comes the hard part: choosing a way forward and maintaining unity in Brexit negotiations.