Abstract. The two-pion production in nucleon-nucleon collisions has been studied by exclusive and kinematically complete experiments from threshold up to T p = 1.36 GeV at CELSIUS-WASA. At near-threshold energies the total and differential distributions for the π + π − and π 0 π 0 channels are dominated by Roper excitation and its decay into Nσ and ∆π channels. At beam energies T p > 1.1 GeV the ∆∆ excitation governs the two-pion production process. In the π + π + channel evidence is found for the excitation of a higher-lying I=3/2 resonance, favorably the ∆(1600). The isovector fusion processes leading to the deuteron and to quasi-stable 2 He, respectively, exhibit no or only a modest ABC-effect, i.e. low-mass enhancement in the ππ-invariant mass spectrum, and can be described by conventional t-channel ∆∆ excitation. On the other hand, the isoscalar fusion process to the deuteron exhibits a dramatic ABC-effect correlated with a narrow resonance-like energy dependence in the total cross section with a width of only 50 MeV and situated at a mass 90 MeV below the ∆∆ mass.