European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivered her sixth annual State of the Union address in Strasbourg on Wednesday.
By invoking Dickens’ “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” she gave herself ample opportunity to slap herself on the back while giving the impression that she was also calling on herself to do more.
Here’s what she didn’t say about the state of the EU – an increasingly militarized and authoritarian superstructure fighting to hold itself together.
Cashing in cashing out
The EU is experiencing an unprecedented cost of living crisis that has been singularly caused by the bloc’s self-defeating energy policies.
Russian gas is under embargo and supplies from the Middle East have been cratered by the US-Israeli war on Iran, and most recently the incursion by the Houthis into Saudi Arabia.
American substitutes are far more expensive than Russian products, meaning natural gas prices across the bloc are now three times higher than they were in January, surpassing €83 per megawatt hour on September 14. Electricity prices remain almost 50% higher than they were in early 2022, making the EU an unappealing location for high-tech and heavy industry alike, as well as crippling consumers.
An authoritarian and centralized union
Both the European Commission and von der Leyen herself significantly consolidated their power in 2026. Von der Leyen began by appointing 26 commissioners without running the list past the European Parliament first, and deliberately withholding budget and internal market strategy documents from member states until hours before publication, making deliberation impossible.
The bloc’s chief diplomat, Kaja Kallas – perhaps more than ever a figure of ridicule – has been sidelined by von der Leyen, with the commission president pushing for the creation of a new intelligence agency answering to her office, and reportedly planning to strip Kallas’ diplomatic service of key foreign policy functions. France and Germany have also reportedly backed moves to downsize the influence of Kallas, who is increasingly seen as a destructive diplomatic influence.
Immigration disintegration
The European Commission tightened its grip on immigration policy when the Migration and Asylum Pact became active in June. Now, for the first time in the bloc’s history, the European Commission can order member states to accept migrants arriving in other states, or pay a financial penalty instead.
No mention was made of the diplomatic debacle in the Schengen ‘free travel’ zone following the invasion of the Spanish exclave of Ceuta by thousands of Moroccan migrants, likely at the hands of a third country.
Guns and money
The EU is taking on more debt to finance its defense hikes; the SAFE instrument, for example, involves Brussels borrowing €150 billion to then loan to member states to procure weapons. Under the bloc’s ‘Readiness 2030’ strategy, the commission is relaxing its deficit rules and allowing member states to borrow around €650 billion for rearmament, while the EU’s much-vaunted ‘drone wall’ initiative is also partly financed by borrowing.
The EU’s over-reliance on debt extends beyond military programs. Brussels borrowed €750 billion to cover its ‘NextGenerationEU’ bailout package during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the debt is coming due right as the commission doubles down on borrowing for rearmament. The European Parliament estimates that €149.3 billion of the EU’s 2028-2034 budget will be spent servicing ‘NextGenerationEU’ debt.
The Ukraine money pit
The State of Union also featured several striking moments of unilateral decisions by the bloc chief, who is heavily criticized for exactly that. Among them was her announcement that €10 billion in unused EU defense loans for member states will be handed to Kiev. Ukraine has already blown its entire 2026 defense budget on its summer drone campaign against Russian civilian targets, leaving a $27 billion gap in its finances.
As RT covered in depth in our ‘State of Corruption’ series, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s cronies have been implicated in plots to loot the country’s ministries, launder millions to bail out corrupt officials, run vote-buying rings in parliament, and pump European money into a fly-by-night missile manufacturer used as a slush fund by Zelensky’s former TV colleagues. With Kiev’s Western-funded anti-corruption agencies and Zelensky’s own chief prosecutor – who has since fled the country – accusing each other of graft schemes this week, any attempt to shovel more money into Ukraine will likely face fierce opposition from the EU’s growing populist movements.
Behind closed doors, some EU officials have proposed advancing Ukraine the 2027 portion of the bloc’s €90 billion loan, while senior staff have been left “surprised and unsettled” at the speed with which Kiev burned through the warchest, according to the New York Times.
Blame Canada?
The presence of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney – former head of the Bank of England and isolated in North America – was touted as some kind of victory. Von der Leyen’s unilateral ‘announcement’ that Canada would become the EU’s first ‘Associate Member’ had eyebrows raised, given that there is no such thing, neither in law nor the bloc’s founding treaties.
Carney himself looked less than impressed, especially given the reporting in the Financial Times that his European charm offensive had effectively failed and that few special terms or tariffs would be forthcoming.
Von der Leyen nevertheless touted his presence a victory and vindication of a deep-set alliance.
The rise of the right
Von der Leyen’s blank-check approach to Ukraine is bitterly opposed by Germany’s right-wing AfD, which has been the country’s most popular party since early 2025 and won a landslide victory in state elections in Saxony-Anhalt last week. The AfD has called for an end to “all war-prolonging support measures, in particular all weapons and military-equipment deliveries to Ukraine immediately.”
In France, where presidential elections are just over six months away, right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen has entered the race with a 16-point lead over her nearest competitor, the left-wing Jean-Luc Melenchon. Although Le Pen’s National Rally party is more pro-Ukraine than the AfD, Le Pen favors peace talks with Russia, and party vice-president Louis Aliot told reporters this week that she would “turn off the tap” on military aid to Kiev.
A right-wing shift in the EU’s two most powerful member states presents a clear threat to von der Leyen’s Ukraine project.
RT’s European election coverage already know how the European Commission will handle the populist surge, suffice to say what is seen as censorship and information control is called “democratic resilience” in Strasbourg.
The EU’s repression machine
Saxony-Anhalt is due to receive €2.95 billion in EU funding before the end of next year. With the AfD now in power, that funding could soon be suspended if the party acts against “the European project,” Green MEP Daniel Freund told German broadcaster ARD last week. It is unlikely that Freund was engaging in idle scaremongering: the commission has previously cut funding to Hungary and Poland over ideological clashes, with former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban describing the freeze as retaliation for his anti-migrant and anti-LBGT policies.
In France, the commission will more than likely activate its so-called ‘Rapid Response System’ (RRS) ahead of next year’s election. Once activated, this system allows commission-approved “fact checkers” to order social media platforms to remove content, under the auspices of protecting the election from “interference.” The EU has activated this toolkit in every national election across the bloc since 2024, including France’s legislative election that summer, and Hungary’s parliamentary election this April.
According to documents released by the US House Judiciary Committee earlier this year, the RSS was almost always used “to disadvantage conservative or populist political parties.” Social media platforms were forced to comply or face legal penalties under the EU’s Digital Services Act, which requires them to stop the spread of supposed “disinformation.”
Censorship as ‘resilience’
Controlling narratives and ensuring the right parties win elections in members states has now become the business of Brussels and von der Leyen's flagship truth ministry got an honorable mention in that regard. The EUs' Center for Democratic Resilience, which has no office and one staff member, will continue to “anticipate, detect and respond to threats to our democracies, such as foreign information manipulation,” she delcared.
Similarly, states hopeful of EU membership must accept that “values are non-negotiable.”
Pyrrhic victories
Von der Leyen touted the EU’s trade deals with India and the Mercosur nations, its 21 sanctions packages against Russia, its hiked defense spending, and its support for native technology and clean energy as victories.
These wins, however, are pyrrhic at best. The Mercosur trade deal – which allows EU automakers to export more cars to Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay, in exchange for the EU importing more of these countries’ meat and agricultural products – stands to harm European farmers. She mentioned farmers once.
The bloc’s sanctions packages have dealt more damage to EU economies than to Russia.
Bottom line: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times
Von der Leyen admitted to no mistakes, and insisted everything she has done has been the morally superior option. The EU’s isolation was couched as an announcement of groups focused on stockpiling critical mineral and rare earth materials for a tech eco-system that doesn’t exist.
Allowing addictive social media tech to infect generations of European youth was ignored in favor of mutti-style bureaucratic grandstanding where burden of proof could be shifted to the toxic US social media giants.
Her refusal to countenance peace for Ukraine looked unhinged given the widely reported issues in Kiev and as the cost-of-living crisis her policies have brought about threatens to ruin families across the bloc.
The reality is that her increasingly dictatorial posturing, militarism, and neoliberal maximalism has brought into being the very energy that will likely overtake her, and those aligned with her.
She is being undone by the very force of her own stubborn logic.