Speaking to the European Parliament, Mr. Juncker urged governments, which hold the real power in the bloc, to “stop bashing the E.U.” for problems, like youth unemployment and low economic growth, that are the responsibility of nation states.
“It would do us all good if we simply stopped Brussels-bashing, E.U.-bashing,” he said.
That is highly unlikely, of course, given the prominence of anti-European right-wing parties running historically strong campaigns in core member states like France, Germany and the Netherlands. They are following the success of the anti-Europe U.K. Independence Party in Britain, which pushed “Brexit,” as Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union is commonly known.
Mr. Juncker’s scenarios are also an implicit acknowledgment that this crisis of faith in the European Union may not be making the bloc stronger, but represent a threat to its very future.
In conceding that there could be more than one way forward, Mr. Juncker may have helped the European establishment fend off those critics who say countries must leave the bloc in order to regain greater control of their sovereignty.
“The risk, some say, is that you can undermine the coherence and unity of the union, but that’s too bad, because it can’t hold together if it’s not flexible,” said Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform, a research institution in London. “For instance, why pretend all countries will join the euro? It won’t happen.”
The mantra of European Union bureaucrats has always been that crises make it stronger, creating the need for more Europe, rather than less. “Stronger” is implicitly defined as more integration and centralizing more power with European institutions in Brussels.
But with the European Union encountering trouble on every corner — Brexit, right-wing politics, migration, poor economic growth, and the continuing problem in the eurozone over what to do with massive Greek debt and Italian banks — it is now the bloc itself that is in crisis.
Mr. Juncker, who is sometimes criticized as disengaged or passive, set out to form the debate.
“A united Europe at 27 needs to shape its own destiny and carve out a vision for its own future,” he wrote in his white paper outlining “reflections and scenarios for the EU27 by 2025.”
Mr. Juncker wants national leaders to give him a mandate at a meeting on March 25 in Rome to begin a popular consultation. He will then need to decide how to carry out the work.
One thing that will not change anytime soon is the glacial pace of European decision making. The process of determining what path to take will probably take at least two years, a similar time frame to the one negotiators will have to complete Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union.
For now, many of the suggestions are vague and exploratory.
Guy Verhofstadt, a pro-European lawmaker who represents Belgium in the European Parliament, told Mr. Juncker that there was a simpler solution to dealing with the migration crisis, to stabilizing troubled banks and to lowering energy prices: scrap the need for all member states to agree on major policy decisions, a root cause of deadlock.
“The unanimity rule has become an obstacle, a permanent blockade,” Mr. Verhofstadt said.
The issues are sensitive. Even the suggestion of a varied Europe brought some howls. Gianni Pittella, the leader of the Socialist Democrats in the European Parliament, suggested that Mr. Juncker had shied away from choosing a single pathway to restore faith in the European project because of political cowardice.
“We cannot accept the sacrifice of a common European future as a result of the shortsightedness of the council or because of a fear of possible outcomes of national elections,” Mr. Pittella said in a statement, referring to the European Council, which brings together national leaders, but not explicitly naming France, Germany or the Netherlands.
Which of Mr. Juncker’s scenarios is likely to prevail will depend on the outcome of elections in those countries and on the winners of the next round of European elections, to be held in 2019.