State of the Union address: key takeaways from Ursula von der Leyen’s speech

On 16 September, Ursula von der Leyen delivered her annual State of the Union (SOTEU) address to the European Parliament. This event took stock of the Commission’s work and outlined future priorities. What are the key takeaways? On this page, you will find analyses by researchers from the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics.

The EU budget: at the heart of the choices ahead

by Patrick Le Galès

The war in Ukraine and European rearmament; the energy and economic crises exacerbated by the war in the Middle East; the effects of climate change; the erosion of trust in democracy and the rise of the far right; the risks of technological dependence; and an ageing population: the challenges facing the EU are immense.

Against this backdrop, one major issue remains surprisingly under-discussed, at least in France: the 2028-2034 Multiannual Financial Framework, the EU's long-term budgetary plan, which sets out the EU’s financial priorities and is due to be finalised by the end of the year.

Since the Covid crisis, a number of budgetary innovations have been introduced in the EU. For example:

• joint borrowing has increased the available budget from 1.2 per cent to nearly 3 per cent of European GDP;
• the Next Generation EU recovery plan has injected €672 billion into the economy;
• new budgetary rules have introduced conditions such as respect for the rule of law.

The Commission has built on this momentum for the next budget. It proposes moving from around 50 programmes to four major clusters. This reform could lead to major restructuring (such as the merger of agricultural and cohesion policies) and raises key questions: how does Europe finance innovation, infrastructure, rearmament and the climate transition, whilst maintaining support for agriculture and the reduction of regional inequalities?

The next EU budget will determine part of the Union’s capacity to respond to these challenges. The speech on 16 September must therefore be an opportunity for a lively political debate on the EU’s priorities and the resources it allocates to them.

More than a speech: a European ritual

By Florence Faucher

Since 2010, the State of the European Union (SOTEU) speech has given the President of the Commission a stage to address the European Parliament – and, through it, a much wider audience across the EU.

Although much attention in the coming days will be dedicated to the priorities it sets for the EU, its significance goes beyond its policy contents and can also be found in what it symbolises. 

• SOTEU is a political ritual that defines the community to which it is addressed. 
• It marks the beginning of its annual political cycle and its repetition is a reminder of the continuity of the European project. 
• It is formal (set in the European Parliament) and ruled by the Treaty of Lisbon: its solemnity imparts importance and authority to the speaker, here the personification of the institution and thereby of the Union itself. 
• It is an event that is staged and performed to show European democracy in practice, with the Commission reporting on the year past, and setting the agenda for the coming year, holding itself accountable, showcasing its vision and demonstrating its capacity to act for the common good.

It is worth highlighting that SOTEU is the only symbol of the EU explicitly referred to in the Treaty of Lisbon. Unlike the flag or the anthem, it is embedded in the Union’s constitutional framework.

So how should we judge the success of SOTEU 2026 as a symbolic moment in the life of the EU? Not only by what is said, but also by what it represents beyond the media chatter. 
The 2026 SOTEU will be a success if: 

• it stimulates attention and discussions well beyond Brussels and Strasbourg, allowing European citizens to engage with how the EU affects their lives and to think of it as standing up for them;
• it contributes to bolster the Union’s presence and visibility on the international stage, reaffirming and reinforcing its political weight;
• it helps create expectations about the European political agenda and reaffirms the EU as source of stability, peace, cooperation and collective strength for its Member States.

The real test will come with time and lies with the part it plays in making the European Union more visible and closer to Europeans.

Hybrid threats: Addressing the EU’s polycrisis

by Sabine Saurugger

In 2016, the then President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker,  described the EU as living in a permanent polycrisis, condemned to identify and manage one incident after another. Hybrid threats, ranging from cyberattacks and economic coercion to disinformation and the instrumentalization of migration, are exactly that kind of incident: actions that stay below the threshold of armed aggression yet very clearly endanger national security. With major elections due in several member states this year – France, Finland, Estonia, etc –, a core democratic principle – open elections free from foreign interference – is directly exposed. 

Commission President von der Leyen captured the shift in her speech, going even further. She warned that “hybrid threats facing Europe are less and less hybrid and less and less threats” and, in a security-centred manner, even spoke of “cognitive warfare”.

Her answer to this is institutional. In the framework of a "New Security Strategy" for the EU which she will propose together with the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, Ursula von der Leyen calls for:

• an Emergency Security Protocol, which will convene urgent talks in case of crisis – the EU’s version of Nato’s Article 4 mechanism;
• a European Security Council, understood as a new security forum for EU and like-minded leaders, such as the UK or Canada. 

These coordination structures are layered on top of the EU’s capacity building instruments, such as the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA), the European Parliament’s Special Committees on Foreign Interference (INGE I and II), and the EU-NATO The European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE). Von der Leyen also referred to the work of the EU’s Centre for Democratic Resilience, established after last year’s SOTEU address, but without having delivered yet other than meetings amongst high-level officials.

The pattern is telling. Confronted with pounding threats, the Commission responds by adding horizontal coordination structures, as it has done consistently since the early 2010s, rather than pursuing supranational integration. Nothing suggests that this is about to end in the field of hybrid threats.
 

The EU Still in Panic Mode about Migration?

by Paula Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik

Ursula von der Leyen's State of the Union address included a new "Emergency Response Instrument" for migration, tucked under the heading "Democracy, Rule of Law and Values." Finally a tool that can help the EU out of its “panic mode” on migration? Not so fast… 

The trigger is familiar: in response to the highly mediatised Ceuta crisis, von der Leyen put forward a new “Emergency Response Framework”. This parallels the EU’s reaction to the 2021 Belarus border crisis, where the Commission’s response was a new “Instrumentalisation Regulation”. 

The content of the new rules remains unclear, but von der Leyen announced that "time-limited and strictly defined flexibility” (read: derogations from EU rules) could be “triggered under a strictly defined set of criteria”, “always compliant with fundamental rights”.

The irony: the Crisis Regulation, which entered into force this June as part of the new Pact on Migration and Asylum, already covers exactly this scenario. It covers "exceptional situations of mass arrivals" that render a Member State's asylum system non-functional, and foresees solidarity measures and derogations to standard procedures at the border. The fact that the new rules were not applied in the Ceuta crisis is an indicator that new EU-level rules are unlikely to change what happens on the ground in cases of mass arrivals – where Member States are already suspending asylum applications, denying access to the asylum procedure or even openly conduct push-backs at the border. 

What might well change is the norm. If the proposal entails the possibility to suspend asylum access, this would go counter to the principle of non-refoulement enshrined in international refugee law, which recognises no such derogation. This would be a fundamental acceleration of the “illiberal turn” in EU asylum policy.

A modest counterpoint: Ursula von der Leyen also announced a new Mediterranean Youth Skills and Jobs Initiative on legal migration pathways. Such as proposal might be useful discursively – but less so in practice, given how little similar initiatives in recent years have shifted the underlying drivers of irregular migration⁽¹⁾. 

The real question SOTEU 2026 raises isn't whether the EU can respond to migration pressure. It's whether "Democracy, Rule of Law and Values" can keep meaning what it says while accommodating more and more exceptions.

Environmental policy: softening the narrative

By Matteo Mandelli

When it comes to environmental policy, the SOTEU 2026 address confirms that the EU’s discourse on the ecological crisis is changing. Three main takeaways:

1. Adaptation takes centre stage

“On climate change, this summer was the summer of truth” is perhaps SOTEU’s most quotable line on this subject. The EU remains firmly on the side of climate science, avoiding denialism, but reframes the debate mostly in terms of adaptation: heatwaves, water scarcity and wildfires dominate the speech. Even SOTEU’s most moving moment revolves around this, with von der Leyen telling the tragic story of a Danish pilot deceased while taming a wildfire. Although the opening of this new EU policy area is promising and interesting, von der Leyen conveys a specific idea of adaptation, which is reactive and emergency-oriented rather than preventive and structural. 

2. Security and affordability drive mitigation

“This is not about mitigation or adaptation. We need both”. Yet mitigation itself receives relatively little attention. The EU pledges to keep its climate targets, but it is unclear exactly how these will be reached. The green transition is primarily framed in terms of energy security and affordability, emphasizing the reduction of import dependence and lowering prices. Electrification remains important, but the “technological neutrality” mantra risks opening the door to new ecological trade-offs, for instance by enabling the uptake of less sustainable energy sources.

3. Soft responses to hard challenges

The proposed policy instruments (including an EU Corporation on Critical Raw Materials, a European Firefighting Fleet, a Climate Insurance Alliance and a European Heatwave Plan) appear to be largely “soft laws”, thus unlikely to meet the monumental ecological challenges ahead. SOTEU is also interesting for what it leaves unsaid: key “hard” policy files under discussion or implementation (such as the revision of the Emission Trading System) are selectively absent. Finally, the environmental policy agenda lacks an integrated perspective. The contradictions between climate action and the simplification agenda receives little attention and, with the weakening of social and cohesion policies, it is hard to see how the transition can remain just and legitimate.

European Cohesion in an Age of Transitions: Towards a Spatially Blind Policy?

by Charlotte Halpern

Forty years after the Single European Act made reducing regional disparities a core objective of European integration, what remains of cohesion? Very little, at least judging by Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union address on 16 September.

Cohesion policy was not mentioned by name. Yet the territorial dimension surfaced repeatedly: in the uneven distribution of the benefits of AI across regions, the “right to stay” in one’s region, and the particular vulnerability of some territories to climate change. These references echo the principle underpinning the inclusion of cohesion in the Treaties in 1986: European transformations have uneven territorial effects, which call for mechanisms of solidarity.

The 9th Cohesion Report (2024) highlights both the achievements of cohesion policy and the challenges that remain: 

• slowing convergence, 
• persistent regional disparities, 
• the risk that the climate and digital transitions, as well as demographic decline, will deepen existing territorial divides.

In France, the Court of Auditors has highlighted the complexity and limited transparency of European funds, as well as shortcomings in evaluating their effectiveness. There is clearly a case for simplification. But simplification should not mean diluting territorial objectives or making EU funding spatially blind.

Yet this is precisely the risk posed by the new budgetary architecture taking shape for 2028–2034. Folding cohesion policy into broad national and regional partnership plans, combined with the non-renewal of the Just Transition Fund as a stand-alone instrument, could make both funding and the territories most exposed to the costs of transition less visible.

The paradox is striking: just as the EU increasingly recognises that transitions have uneven territorial consequences, it risks diluting the very instruments designed to address them.

Forty years after the Single European Act, what is at stake may therefore be less cohesion as an objective than cohesion as a policy in its own right.