The Commission’s Reflections on the EU’s Future

This paper presents the way the European Commission (EC) views the European Union’s future and its own future role. It argues that despite the new rules introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon, the EC will not become overly politicized after the 2014 European elections. The paper also outlines the case for political union through a “democratic federation of nation states”, as proposed by the President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso in State of the Union 2012, and discusses the Commission’s proposals for further economic integration in the Eurozone and the EU in general, with special focus on the European Semester procedure and the EU’s new economic governance. The Commission’s projects are then put in the context of predictions about the EU’s future, made by researchers dealing with the subject.