Ursula von der Leyen’s sixth State of the Union speech: A grand sweep, but thin on details?

Home Shows Talking Europe To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Cover image: Talking Europe © France 24 12:23 Issued on: 18/09/2026 - 17:17 From the show In this episode, we debrief one of the key annual events in the EU calendar: the State of the Union speech. It was Ursula von der Leyen’s sixth such address as President of the European Commission, and the second State of the Union speech of her second mandate. We home in on the key innovations since the 2026 address: a potential associate membership for Canada with the European Union, a proposed ban on social media use for children and an as-yet vague ‘emergency framework’ to deal with Ceuta-like migrant crises. Programme prepared by Isabelle Romero, Perrine Desplats, Florine Hausfater and Agnès Le Cossec