All — or at least many — eyes were on the European Parliament chamber in Strasbourg Wednesday for what the EU bills as its biggest political moment of the year.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s State of the Union speech may never have had a chance to live up to that hype, but it did succeed in drawing attention yet again to the many troubles facing the bloc. The challenge for Juncker — as it will be also for the 27 non-British leaders who will gather in Bratislava later this week for a summit — was to send some kind of signal to the public that the EU can deal with these problems.

Here, we grade his performance on several key criteria:

Substance: B+

The speech’s title, “Towards a Better Europe — a Europe that Protects, Empowers and Defends,” might have been composed by jumbling up refrigerator-magnet clichés (two of which are redundant). But apart from that the speech managed to convey a fairly digestible list of priorities for the EU, and that’s an achievement. Juncker made it clear that “security” is more than just about defense, it is about protecting Europe’s economic interests and, as he put it, its “way of life.”

EU leaders seem to have agreed that what Europeans want more than anything is to feel protected — whether from terrorism or economic hardship or globalization or losing jobs to migrants — and have decided to home in on that. The message was echoed again and again in his speech in reference to everything from trade to data privacy to human rights.

Setting: D-

There’s only so much you can do visually with the Parliament’s hemicycle, or with the televised image of a grey-haired man behind a podium, or with the decidedly non-primetime slot of 9 a.m.

Delivery: B+

We’re grading on the curve here. Long revered for his political acumen and ability to broker back-room deals, Juncker has never been known as a compelling public speaker. But he showed improvement in his second State of the Union speech, meandering far less than he did last year — when he aimed for poetry but too often veered from his script with asides and random observations. This year his demeanor was calm and businesslike. There were few big applause lines, but also no real gaffes.

Language skills: A-

It’s hard to fault the Commission president here. His ability to shift among German, French and English in the speech was impressive — especially when deployed to suit whatever message he was trying to get across. European solidarity? German. Money stuff? English. Getting philosophical or wistful? French. Still, he occasionally mumbled when speaking English or French, and his Luxembourgish accent may not please all German ears.

Soundbites: B-

The speech had a fair share of quotable phraselets (depending on which translation you were listening to, or which original language). But not all of them are lines Juncker will want to see in the papers. “I’m not going to stand here today and tell you that everything is now fine,” he said in his opening moments, in the kind of wry understatement we’ve come to expect from him. He also said Europe was in an “existential crisis” with political turmoil being fueled by “galloping populism.” He declared that the EU was “not at risk” — which only invites people to think it is. “Europe,” he also said, “needs to toughen up.”

Expectations game: C

At a time when the stakes have never been higher for Europe, EU officials spent several days lowering expectations for this speech. One top Commission aide described it as “pragmatic” — a word usually not meant to inspire awe. Juncker also tried to keep it in perspective. “We cannot solve all our problems with one more speech,” he said. “Or with one more summit.”

But the EU institutions sent mixed messages on this front: Their communications staffs have tried hard to build the State of the Union into a big media “event” along the lines of the annual U.S. presidential address for which it is named. It’ll be a long time before the EU’s version achieves that level of interest — especially if it keeps being scheduled for just after breakfast. Still, that didn’t hold back a blizzard of social media and mini-websites with embedded streaming video devoted to creating buzz around the speech.

One area where the Commission’s pre-game spin did pay off: The speech was supposed to last for around 70-80 minutes but came in well short of that, at under 50. Bonus points for what passes for brevity in the EU.

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Christmas in September: A-

The speech fulfilled one tradition of State of the Union speeches no matter where they’re given: lots of policy prezzies for everyone. The Commission president offered a full wish list of policy proposals — some new, some in need of a reboot. These included a push to complete the capital markets union aimed at boosting investment and growth across the bloc; a revamp of telecoms and copyright rules to better reflect digital technologies (free Wi-Fi for everyone!); and the perennial promise to cut red tape. He also offered such salt-of-the-earth constituency shout-outs as “Being European means standing up for our steel industry,” and “The Commission will always stand by our farmers.”

Perhaps his best soundbite of all: “I want journalists, publishers and authors to be paid fairly for their work.”