For the past six months, officials across Brussels have been feeding ideas, demands and policy pledges into Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union speech. Its contents, however, will remain a closely guarded secret until the European Commission president takes the podium on Wednesday.

The speech is the product of a sprawling process involving Commission departments, national officials, experts, lobbyists and interest groups. Yet the final decisions — what makes the cut, what is discarded and what becomes the central message — are made by a tiny circle around the president.

“There was a process where everybody would ask for something,” said Margaritis Schinas, a former Commission vice-president who helped prepare previous addresses. “But there was also a process where the president and the cabinet and ourselves were very clear on the few things to harvest that would make an impact.”

The challenge, he said, is to make everyone feel their concerns are being addressed while avoiding a “Christmas tree approach” of ornamental policy pledges with no clear overall direction.

Modeled on the U.S.’s own centuries-old tradition, the EU’s State of the Union was set up in 2010 as a rare chance for politicians and citizens to hear directly from the president of the executive. In the years since, the speech has become a watershed moment for the Commission to lay out its political agenda.

“In these 10 years, the Commission … transitioned from being a regulator and an enforcer to being a manager of crises, of migration centers, of [emergency situations]. The more tasks the Commission assumed over the years, the more relevant [the speech] became,” said Schinas, who also served as chief spokesperson under former Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

And with von der Leyen approaching the final quarter of her time in office, she has an increasingly narrow window of opportunity to pass the policies that will define her second mandate.

The speech — which usually lasts around an hour — is the result of almost half a year of behind-the-scenes work, current and former presidential aides told POLITICO, with heated negotiations between officials, departments, experts and interest groups being concluded before a single word is finalized.

“There’s input from the services, the directors-general feed in. There have been 300 lunches and papers that get read through by basically two people, and may or may not end up in there,” said one senior EU official, granted anonymity to speak on the internal process, like others in this article.

The text can remain open for changes until the early hours of the morning before the speech.

The inner circle

This year, the full draft is being kept within a tight circle until the final days. That includes von der Leyen, her powerful head of cabinet Bjoern Seibert and her communications chief Alexandra Henman.

The wider Commission machinery is still heavily involved. Teams across departments are asked to crunch numbers, check policy recommendations and consult stakeholders, including industry groups and think tanks. The Directorate-General for Communication, run by von der Leyen ally and former Romanian journalist Dana Spinant, works on lists of achievements, shareable clips and commitments for social media.

It also coordinates with media outlets across the 27 EU countries to get the message out. This year, dozens of national journalists and social media influencers have been invited to cover the speech, in a bid to reach a public that is increasingly skeptical of the EU.

Vincent Stuer, a Belgian political adviser and former speechwriter to José Manuel Barroso, who served as president of the European Commission from 2004-2014, said his then-boss worked with a larger group to compile the address.

“He wanted to include everyone in the story. And that’s why his speeches were a bit too watered down,” he said. “Von der Leyen is much more … presidential in the way she does it.”

Know your limits

That presidential approach also means deciding what not to promise. Previous failures to deliver on policy pledges should be a reminder for von der Leyen to focus on things she knows she can get across the line, said two EU diplomats whose countries will be watching closely to see if their priorities are reflected.

Last year, for example, she vowed sanctions on Israeli settlements and government ministers. The proposals failed to secure the necessary support from capitals.

But while officials, envoys and lobbyists will be hanging on the content of the speech, those who have written them said the president will be just as focused on the style — practicing tricky and sensitive sentences, working out how to deal with hecklers from the far right of the parliamentary chamber and even packing in a few witty ripostes.

“Von der Leyen is very good — she does, off the cuff, make a few changes in the speech when she needs to. At some point she [addressed] the ‘shouting side of the house’ as she called it; she rapped the extreme right on the knuckles,” said Stuer.

He cautioned, however, against getting too glib. “It’s always the same for speechwriting: Ethos, pathos and logos are the three elements you need in there,” he went on, referencing the ancient concepts of building credibility, triggering an emotional response and using logic to land your point.

“The ethos is there for von der Leyen, obviously, for what she’s done and what she represents,” he said. “The logos she does very well. But the pathos is a difficult thing, so you want to put it in there without having them do jokes or emotional stories.”

One way to create that emotional connection is to bring in special guests and put faces to the issues the president is discussing. Last year, von der Leyen pointed to a Greek firefighter who had been tackling devastating wildfires and to a Ukrainian child abducted by Russian occupation forces.

This year, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney will sit in the seat in front of her, embodying planned calls for closer relations with other pro-free trade democracies.