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The present State of the European Union – the so-called SOTEU- underlined the block’s several main ideas dealing with “making the EU better prepared for emerging challenges”, such as the digital transition and AIs, climate change and security, as well as other “existential risks”. This time, the address strives to formulate the EU-wide “independences”: economic, military and technological, amid geopolitical pressures. However, it is still vital to follow the ways the EU will turn those commitments into actions.
Background
Generally, in September each year, except for the transition year of the European elections in 2024, the Commission President delivers the State of the Union address to the Parliament. The address takes stock of the achievements of the past year and presents the priorities for the year ahead. The SOTEUs commonly sets out how the Commission will address the most pressing regional challenges and shaping the EU integrational future. The present SOTEU-2026, described the EU’s being in a “complex age of great possibilities and great perils”.
In previous years, the Commission’s annual addresses have been about “listing ideas and policies the EU should implement”; this time, with a combination of more fragile EU member states’ governments and the myriad challenges facing the world, the SOTEU sounded more like a “direct appeal to Europeans” about the bloc’s 450 million people wishing a “better place to live in”. Thus, the President mentioned the so-called existential threats facing the EU, including present internal concerns about nationalist far-right parties gaining greater support in the EU’s biggest countries ― including the Alternative for Germany winning its first German state election and the National Rally on track to make Marine Le Pen French president next year, etc. Hence, the Commission President attempted to appeal to voters and politicians to concentrate on the EU-wide central political-economic issues.
Critics on the previous SOTEU-2025 in: https://www.integrin.dk/2025/09/08/the-state-of-the-union-2025-critics-voiced-some-controversies/
And the SOTEU 2024 in: https://stateoftheunion.eui.eu/editions/the-state-of-the-union-2024
With the AI and climate change, the President focused on two, as she called it “the greatest perils of our times and tipping points”, which needed a proper management to ensure “future prosperity and security”. Thus, the Commission would present a European Heatwave Plan for early-warning systems and better health preparedness, coped with unveiling another plan, the “Water Initiative” as a bid to address water scarcity after the record-breaking summer of droughts. The initiative also aims to tackle water risk management in the agricultural sector, stressing its importance for industry and food security.
The Commission president robustly defended the EU’s green ambitions, urging the bloc to “stay the course on our climate targets” and “step up dramatically on preparedness.”
And while von der Leyen said she was an “AI optimist,” she warned that the technology “will soon be in the hands of adversaries who see the world very differently to us.” The need is to move AI “from the screen to the real economy and society. On the factory floor. In the hospital ward. In precision agriculture. In our energy grids. For autonomous driving. For defense.”
She also said she will invite frontier AI labs for talks on how the EU can support industry efforts to “pace the frontier” — recycling the language first used by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei last weekend in his warning about the speed of AI development.
Reference to: https://www.politico.eu/article/ursula-von-der-leyen-state-of-the-union-europe-independence-ai-climate/
Some vital ideas in SOTEU-2026
= The idea of a special European security executive body has been floated in the EU headquarters for years, but has taken on fresh urgency recently due to complex global problems. The President started new discussions by initiating a European Security Council, that would bring together the EU and like-minded countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Ukraine and Norway (e.g. there was no mention of the US) to discuss and manage threats. Thus, an implicit suggestion that the EU should forge on without relying on the US, is striking up new partnerships and setting up its own Security Council, outside of NATO.
The suggested European Security Council could provide a useful forum for leaders to discuss security and defence; however, it would offer little added value unless the EU is reforming its common foreign and security policy decision-making, particularly the unanimity requirement that impedes swift collective action.
The idea of the “Congress of Europe” proposed by President should not only seek to “recapture the European imagination”; it must address how the EU is supposed “to change in order to deliver”. The new approach means modernising the enlarging union’s operating system: the forthcoming enlargement should therefore include ambitious proposals for the future of the EU governance.
= External relations. The EU is oriented towards closer work with the states on AI, though not with the US and/or China; the President was inviting major global AI labs to the EU to discuss efforts to “pace the frontier” of AI development, as was recently suggested by the American digital gurus. She confirmed the EU’s approach based on AI models that “balance possibilities and risks”.
More on world-wide AI regulations in: a) https://www.integrin.dk/2026/09/15/global-ai-issues-the-g20-innovations-meeting-and-mitigating-risks/; and b) https://www.integrin.dk/2026/09/18/european-business-in-the-digital-transition-preparing-for-ais-legal-compliance/
While calling for a wider cooperation with the United Kingdom, Canada and other partners on AI (but did not mention the US or China, the two countries leading in the global AI race), the President revealed the “vision of Europe” as a geopolitical leader with plans for new partnerships and closer relationships. The most notable of which was offering to explore possible “associate EU membership” status for Canada, in what would amount to a first such initiative in EU; it pointed to real possibilities in areas ranging from technology to pharmaceuticals to defense procurement, in which the EU remains heavily dependent on the US. The proposed “alliance for the future” with Canada is regarded as “a new transatlantic anchor for a more autonomous Europe”.
Reference to: https://www.epc.eu/publication/soteu-We-needed-delivery-and-implementation/
= Financial support for Ukraine through the EU’s €150 billion SAFE defense-loan program; the program was adopted in May 2025 as part of the wider Readiness 2030/ReArm Europe initiative. The Security Action for Europe financial instrument provides long-maturity loans to help member states fund urgent, common defence procurement. Key features include: – budget envelope with about €150 billion raised through EU borrowing on capital markets until 2030. – Loan terms: favorable, long-duration maturities with low interest rates relying on the EU’s high credit rating and a 15% pre-financing option. – Local production rule: at least 65% of component costs must originate within the EU, Ukraine, or eligible EEA/EFTA countries. – Joint procurement: primarily structured to reward collaborative procurement involving multiple countries, though single-state exemptions apply temporarily.
Source: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/safe/
= Climate policy has become an urgent issue: the President’s climate message was specifically focused on preparing for the worst (rather than new) emissions-cutting measures. She defended the EU’s existing climate targets but concentrated on dealing with the consequences of a hotter Europe, including a forthcoming European Heatwave Plan, European Water Initiative and a Climate Insurance Alliance. She said there can be “no repeat of this summer,” which was Europe’s hottest ever, causing its forests to burn and its rivers to dry up. The European water initiative, points the EPC, must prioritise clear rules for allocating scarce water going forward and an infrastructure roadmap that makes clear who will shoulder the necessary costs, ensuring they do not fall disproportionately on households and consumers.
https://www.epc.eu/publication/epc-reactions-to-soteu-2026/
= European legal compliance: the Commission President wants the EU states to agree on a new “pact against gold-plating”, as the practice of adding national requirements when implementing EU legislation. “We are doing our best at the European level to cut red tape. But now I think it is time for the member states to step up,” she said and called for the overhaul of the single market to be completed by the end of 2027, and supplemented with due attention to simplification and competitiveness. It is surprising, mentioned EPC, that the SOTEU lacked any reference to the circular economy agenda, particularly given the upcoming Circular Economy Act and its vital role in decarbonisation and economic security. The newly announced European Corporation on Critical Raw Materials must integrate and enable the recycling of these materials within Europe.
Source: https://www.epc.eu/publication/epc-reactions-to-soteu-2026/
= Investment opportunities and finances. The Commission spent much time in 2025 “talking about making Europe a more attractive place to invest and scale up”; thus, among President’s main new financial announcement was a Banking Package focused on simplification and tackling fragmentation, a proposal the Commission had already announced in July 2026. However, argue experts, there was little new on the broader ambition to turn Europe into a major investment hub.
The European Commission FISMA Banking Package has implemented the final Basel III reforms into EU law, updating the Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR III) and Capital Requirements Directive (CRD VI). The package’s main components include, e.g. – Basel III implementation: enforces risk-sensitive capital requirements and introduces an output floor limiting the capital benefits banks get from using internal models. – ESG risk management: integrates explicit rules for banks and supervisors to identify, manage, and stress-test environmental, social, and governance risks. – supervisory powers: harmonizes tools across member states, giving watchdogs more power over third-country branch supervision, fintech integration, and manager “fit and proper” checks.
Source on FISMA in: https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/fisma/items/730681/en
= The long-term EU budget, known as the Multiannual Financial Framework, MFF. The president put pressure on national governments to approve new EU-wide taxes to finance the bloc’s next seven-year budget, as “the modern budget needs new own resources,” she said, referring to the term for EU taxes. The Commission’s proposal to generate over €60 billion through new levies has been met with resistance in national capitals. The MFF sets the maximum spending limits for the European Union over a period of at least five years, with the current framework running from 2021 to 2027 at around €1.2 trillion. Europe’s shared challenges are growing exponentially, yet its budget debate is heading in the wrong direction. The President calls for the EU to have “new own resources”, which must also create budgetary headroom for future common borrowing to finance defence, technological leadership and critical infrastructure at the necessary scale.
More on the long-term EU budget in: https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/eu-budget/long-term-eu-budget/eu-budget-2028-2034_en
= EU-Chaina issues. The President mentioned a dramatic EU’s trade deficit with China – “one billion a day; it reached a tipping point,” she said, and highlighted “dangerous dependencies” on China for critical raw materials. But on trade, she stopped short of calling for any dramatic measures — something she did in the SOTEU-2023, when she launched an anti-subsidy investigation into electric vehicles. “We will use all the tools at our disposal to rebalance our relationship,” she said this year, in an apparent reference to the EU’s still-under-consideration “diversification instrument”, but did not go further.
https://www.epc.eu/publication/epc-reactions-to-soteu-2026/
= Getting tough on migration. The SOTEU-2026 mentioned the Ceuta crisis; the President used the event to call on creating the European Emergency Response Framework, which would give EU countries (in similar occasions and scenarios) “time-limited and strictly defined flexibility in standard procedures.” In practical terms it means – returning migrants faster without worrying about granting asylum; besides, the EU wants to strengthen Frontex, its border agency, but did not mention raising staff numbers, as she has called for previously.
More in: https://www.frontex.europa.eu/
= Banning kids from social media. The President attracted attention to the AI-social media-teenagers and childhood’s interconnections. She vowed tougher action to protect kids online, including keeping some minors off popular platforms like TikTok and Instagram: i.e. “no social media under the age of 13, no personal account under the age of 15”; she added “no platforms would also have to introduce “safe design” for under-18s. The much-anticipated EU-kids act would signal the commission’s strategic direction and placing age-verification measures at its core. The real test, however, is how the EU will put pressure on big tech and prioritise the design of online platforms. Age limits alone are a weak instrument.
General source and citations from: https://www.politico.eu/article/12-takeaways-ursula-von-der-leyens-state-of-the-union/