Discours sur l'Etat de l'Union : que retenir des annonces d'Ursula von der Leyen ?

Le 16 septembre, Ursula von der Leyen a prononcé son discours annuel sur l’état de l’Union devant le Parlement européen. Ce rendez-vous fait un bilan de l'action de la Commission et esquisse les priorités à venir. Qu'en retenir ? Retrouvez sur cette page les analyses des chercheurs et chercheuses du Centre d'études européennes et de politique comparée. 

Le budget européen au cœur des choix à venir

par Patrick Le Galès

Guerre en Ukraine et réarmement européen, crises énergétique et économique renforcées par la guerre au Moyen-Orient, effets du changement climatique, érosion de la confiance démocratique et progression de l’extrême droite, risques de dépendance technologique, vieillissement de la population : les défis de l’UE sont immenses. 

Dans ce contexte, un sujet majeur reste étonnamment peu débattu, en tout cas en France : le prochain Cadre financier pluriannuel, plan de dépenses pour la période 2028-2034 traduisant les priorités financières de l'UE, dont la négociation doit aboutir d’ici la fin de l’année.

Depuis la crise du Covid, les innovations budgétaires ont été nombreuses. Par exemple :

• l’emprunt commun a porté le budget mobilisable de 1,2 % à près de 3 % du PIB européen ;
• le plan de relance Next Generation EU a permis d’injecter 672 milliards d’euros dans l’économie ;
• de nouvelles règles budgétaires ont introduit des conditions telles que le respect de l’État de droit.

La Commission s’est appuyée sur cette dynamique pour le prochain budget. Elle propose de passer d’une cinquantaine de programmes à quatre grands ensembles. Une réforme qui pourrait entraîner des restructurations majeures (comme la fusion des politiques agricole et de cohésion) et pose des questions essentielles : comment financer l’innovation, les infrastructures, le réarmement et la transition climatique, tout en maintenant le soutien à l’agriculture et à la réduction des inégalités territoriales ?
 
Le prochain budget européen déterminera une partie de la capacité de l’Union à répondre à ces défis. Le discours du 16 septembre doit donc être l’occasion d’un vif débat politique sur les priorités et les moyens que se donne l’UE.

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.

Quelle place pour la cohésion dans l'Europe des transitions ?

par Charlotte Halpern

Quarante ans après l’Acte unique, qui faisait de la réduction des écarts entre régions une ambition de l’intégration européenne, que reste-t-il de la cohésion ? Peu de choses, si l’on s’en tient au discours du 16 septembre.

À défaut de mentionner la « politique de cohésion », les territoires apparaissent en filigrane : inégale répartition des bénéfices de l’IA entre régions, « droit à demeurer » dans sa région, attention aux territoires les plus vulnérables au changement climatique. Autant de références au principe qui avait inspiré l’inscription de la cohésion dans les traités en 1986 : les transformations européennes produisent des effets territorialement inégaux qui justifient des mécanismes de solidarité.

Le 9e rapport sur la cohésion (2024) rappelle à la fois les effets de cette politique et les défis persistants :

• convergence ralentie, 
• disparités régionales, 
• risques d’accentuation des fractures sous l’effet des transitions climatique et numérique ou du déclin démographique.

En France, la Cour des comptes propose de simplifier les fonds européens, soulignant leur complexité, leur faible lisibilité et les insuffisances de leur évaluation. Mais simplifier ne devrait pas signifier diluer les objectifs et leur dimension territoriale.

C’est pourtant le risque de la nouvelle architecture budgétaire qui se dessine pour 2028-2036. L’intégration de la cohésion dans de grands plans de partenariat nationaux et régionaux et la non-reconduction du Fonds pour une transition juste comme instrument autonome pourraient réduire la visibilité et les fonds alloués aux territoires les plus exposés aux coûts des transitions.

Le paradoxe est saisissant : au moment où l’Union comprend de mieux en mieux que les transitions ont une géographie, elle risque de rendre moins visibles les instruments permettant d’y répondre. Quarante ans après l’Acte unique, c’est peut-être moins la cohésion comme objectif qui est en cause que la cohésion comme politique.