Jean-Claude Juncker could have used a win.

He thought he had one when the Commission announced a clear example of how the EU makes life easier for consumers: the end of mobile roaming fees. He was delivering on election promises that the EU betters its residents' lives.

There were always plans to limit mobile roaming freedom in some way, but those limits were unveiled last week at a particularly awkward moment. The announcement blew up days ahead of the European Commission president's State of the Union address this Wednesday in Strasbourg, a speech in which he must unite the Continent as Britain prepares to leave the bloc and waves of asylum seekers strain border ties.

The Commission had thought of the limits as nothing but a technical detail, rather than the crux of the policy, and considered them so trivial that they were pushed out while Juncker was in China at the G20 summit.

Instead, it had ignited a firestorm: The roaming limits outraged consumers, Members of the European Parliament and the telecoms industry. Juncker, shocked by the public outcry and "internet hate," tore up his own carefully orchestrated feel-good plan, one source in the European People's Party said.

“After years of saying it would end roaming charges, it [the Commission] pointed millions of eager consumers to the fine print,” said Guillermo Beltra of the consumer group BEUC.

MEPs reacted with a roar, appearing to have forgotten that they voted to include a fair-use clause less than a year ago.

The Commission’s promise “to end mobile roaming fees by mid-2017” had been strategically sliced last year from broader, more contentious plans to overhaul the telecoms industry. Those reforms, which will push rival operators to collaborate more and give regulators more power, are expected to be unveiled just after Juncker’s speech.

The Council and Parliament had approved the roaming rules with a "fair use" clause to address legitimate concerns in the telecoms industry. While everyone would like to avoid roaming fees on vacations and business trips, there is always the risk of abuse of the so-called roam-like-at-home feature, where a customer could get a cheap plan in one country, but live and work in another where rates are higher.

The Commission’s solution: Cap free roaming for 30 consecutive days and limit them to about 90 days in a year.

MEPs reacted with a roar, appearing to have forgotten that they voted to include a fair-use clause less than a year ago. "MEPs, as usual, have not really read what they passed," said one source in the Parliament.

To quell the groundswell, digital Commissioners Andrus Ansip and Günther Oettinger released a joint statement Wednesday praising "the end of roaming charges in the EU."

"After a long battle, these huge bills belong to the past," they said.

They underscored that Europeans travel an average of 12 days a year. So an annual cap of 90 days a year would mean "99 percent of European travelers are covered."

The vitriol didn't stop.

Frustrated chiefs of staff to Commissioners from the rest of the college demanded to know how such an unforced error occurred.

Juncker deployed his right-hand man Martin Selmayr to handle the situation, ignoring protocols: The Commission quietly slipped an announcement on its website late Thursday night, announcing the withdrawal of the proposal.

According to transparency requirements, stakeholders such as the telecoms industry, consumer groups, and national regulators, should have four weeks to comment on anything published on the institution's site.

"The opinion of the president is the only one that matters,” a Commission official said.

MEPs quickly took credit for creating the pressure that prompted the Juncker's decision. “The pressure from the [European People's Party] bears fruit. We are fighting for the end of roaming fees for consumers in 2017 and not for solutions with backdoors,” EPP leader Manfred Weber said.

On Friday, Commission spokesman Alexander Winterstein said that the Commission had been asked to define measures to prevent roaming services from being used for other reasons than periodic traveling. He said he had nothing to add about why the Commission backed away from its proposal.

"I think I gave a full account on Friday," he said Sunday. "If there was more to say I would have said it.”

"Telcos are shocked at the decision, which might open the way to a further increase of the fair use threshold," one senior telecom source said.

Sources claimed small but vocal consumer activists outgunned the powerful telecom lobby at the last minute to remove fair-use protections. One senior telecom source countered that the industry is fretting over Juncker's late intervention.

"Telcos are shocked at the decision, which might open the way to a further increase of the fair use threshold," the source said. "This would undermine the rationale of the clause itself and deny basic economic principles."

The timing could not be worse. After Juncker’s speech, the executive branch will introduce sweeping reforms to the telecoms sector. The plans are expected to include more regulation on internet platforms like WhatsApp and Skype, more coordination and speed in the rollout of 5G technologies and an overhaul of competition for telecoms infrastructure. It's the groundwork needed to catch Europe up to the U.S. and China on everything from self-driving cars, robot-run factories and cross-border healthcare monitoring.

What was meant to be an opportunity to prepare the EU for the next century of technological advancement has caused everyone in the Berlaymont, from the president to interns, to agonize over one of the few consumer wins that the previous Commission managed to squeeze past EU countries and the industry.

The Commission has gone back to the drawing board and promises a new proposal on roaming “soon.”

Quentin Ariès and Zoya Sheftalovich contributed reporting.