The Commission has been sending London clear signals regarding security | Siska Gremmelprez/AFP via Getty Images | SISKA GREMMELPREZ/AFP/Getty The EU’s €26 million campaign to sell itself Commission proposal aims to boost ‘understanding’ of its political priorities.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker wants to spend nearly €26 million on a massive new publicity campaign to promote the EU in 2016, according to a draft plan seen by POLITICO.

The campaign would be the biggest-ever EU communications effort and is built around the theme of "A New Boost for Jobs, Growth and Investment." Its budget of €25.75 million is slated to be spent on a full suite of communications ranging from billboards to web advertisements, and possibly exhibitions and TV and radio air time.

The overall goal of the spending, according to the document prepared by Juncker and his vice president in charge of the EU budget, Kristalina Georgieva, is “To achieve a better understanding by European citizens of the EU, its priorities and activities; To inform and engage different target groups of European citizens about the EU's political priorities.”

Since the onset of recession and economic crisis in 2008 the EU has become associated with policies that create financial pain. Alongside mounting Euroskeptic campaigns, this has left the Commission struggling to sell the public on the benefits of its laws and projects.

The funds required for the campaign would be pooled and spent centrally rather than by individual Commission departments, marking the latest stage of the Commission’s increasing centralization of political decision-making.

The high price tag could cause at backlash at a time of budget tightening across the continent, but is billed as part of a “budget focused on results.”

The money is available based on “spontaneous financial contributions by certain Directorates General,” Juncker and Georgieva state in their plan. Currently in consultation between the various Commission departments, the authors hope to achieve approval from their Commission colleagues in coming weeks.

The new combined fund is considered essential to push a project like the Juncker Investment Plan, which is a top political priority for the Commission but does not have its own separate communication budget. The centerpiece of the plan is a fund that would boost investment in the EU by €315 billion over the next three years.

Commission sources told POLITICO that Juncker’s team have insisted that the Investment Plan act as an umbrella under which other communications efforts sit, in order to explain an overall picture of the EU’s policies.

So while in practice the Investment Plan’s projects and impacts are set to feature prominently in the new publicity campaign, the Commission’s accounting books will book communications costs to projects such as the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund (€7.75 million) and the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (€3.375 million).

Operational decisions on where to buy media space, for example, will be taken by the Commission’s communications department and be overseen by a “Steering Committee” composed of representatives of the departments involved in a given policy.

According to the 2014 Annual Activity Report of the Commission’s communications department, contracts have been in place since June 2014 “for a corporate pilot campaign, operationalising for the first time a pooling of financial resources from different programmes.” The goal is to reach 15 million Europeans in 2015 with the pilot messages.

A related ongoing campaign, "EU: Working for You," tries to simplify the complex ways of the EU into project-based case studies showing how individual communities have made use of EU funds.

The European Commission declined to comment on the new proposal.