Jean-Claude Juncker, the centre-right candidate for president of the European Commission, has launched a bid to win over opponents who say that he is the wrong man to reform the Commission and to ensure its work is focused on pro-growth policies.

On Monday (9 June) Juncker outlined a five-point programme for the Commission, pledging to put growth and jobs at the centre of the Commission’s agenda and to seek to resolve what he described as “the British question”. “As Commission president, I will work for a fair deal with Britain,” Juncker wrote. “A deal that accepts the specificities of the UK in the EU, while allowing the eurozone to integrate further.”

Juncker said that he would be ready to discuss, “in a fair and reasonable manner”, the demands that Prime Minister David Cameron had set out by in a newspaper article in March. Juncker said: “My red line in such talks would be the integrity of the single market and its four freedoms; and the possibility to have more Europe within the eurozone to strengthen the single currency shared by so far 18 and soon 19 member states.”

The document was published just hours before Fredrik Reinfeldt, Sweden’s prime minister and an opponent of Juncker’s nomination, received Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mark Rutte, Dutch prime minister, for talks about policy priorities, at a mini-summit that was seen as being about mobilising anti-Juncker feeling among national leaders.

The centrepiece of Juncker’s jobs and growth pitch is the creation of a ‘single digital market’ for businesses and consumers. “To do so we will need to have the courage to break down national silos in telecoms regulation, in copyright and data protection legislation, in the management of radio waves and in competition law,” Juncker wrote. “I will work on this project from day one of my Commission.”

Juncker also proposed to create a European Energy Union to bundle the EU’s negotiating power and advance the diversification of sources, and to conclude a “reasonable and balanced” trade deal with the United States.

The most detailed point of Juncker’s programme by far concerns deeper eurozone integration and improved social legitimacy of reform measures. He said that the management of the eurozone should shift from the European Central Bank to the Commission and a Eurogroup with a permanent president. Social impact checks should be carried out for support or reform programmes for individual member states, and the eurozone should have single, joint representation in the International Monetary Fund.

Juncker’s document includes a five-point plan on immigration – a burning political issue in the UK but also in Germany and France – and three foreign-policy priorities. It calls for legal avenues for legitimate migrants, improved functioning of the European asylum system, stepped-up protection of the external border and better co-operation with foreign countries.

“I believe we cannot be satisfied how our common foreign policy is working at the moment,” Juncker wrote. “The next High Representative for Europe’s Foreign Affairs and Security Policy will have to a be strong and experienced player to combine national and European tools, and all the tools available in the Commission, in a more effective way [than] we have seen it over the past months,” he wrote in reference to Catherine Ashton, the incumbent. “This will require the High Representative to more fully play his role within the Commission college. I will only accept a High Representative [as member of the European Commission] who is able and has the experience necessary to fill this role to the full.”