Europe Celebrates Being Stronger and More Precarious Than Ever

The European Union has successfully reached a historic new stage of development in which it is simultaneously stronger than ever and more precarious than ever. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the achievement during her 2026 State of the Union address in Strasbourg.

She means that the EU has accumulated more collective tools, money, defence cooperation, energy independence (this joke landed well) and imagined geopolitical weight than ever, while nobody likes it.

Canada

The biggest announcement was that socialist Canada might become the EU’s first “associate member.”

The idea is to invent a new outer ring of countries that can integrate deeply with the Union in selected areas without becoming full members or entering the whole Single Market machinery.

EU membership à la carte for countries which are plainly not joining the EU. That is genuinely new territory. 

The European Security Council

Von der Leyen imagines a new security structure involving EU countries plus Britain, Norway, Ukraine and Canada, sitting somewhere between EU foreign-policy machinery and NATO cooperation.

Apparently, Europe wants to become capable of acting without Washington. This could also open the door for some countries which officially need to stay neutral because of small inconveniences like their constitutions demanding so.

The newly introduced counter-hybrid playbook handles issues like sabotage, arson, cyberattacks, infrastructure attacks, GPS interference, suspicious drones and similar acts, where everybody knows something hostile is happening, but invoking Article 5 would be somewhat too dramatic.

Responsible AI development. Regulation. Control. Whatever.

Von der Leyen backed slowing frontier AI development. AI is dangerous, let's regulate further. Yada yada.

No social-media accounts below 13, restricted access for 13- and 14-year-olds. This is a very nice policy because why leave this issue to parents if the multi-state can collect personal data on everybody accessing public discussion online.

The Climate Insurance Alliance

Only about a quarter of European economic losses from climate-related disasters are currently insured.

Brussels has noticed that if insurance industry says “absolutely not”, congratulations, taxpayer, you have entered the insurance business.

The European Heatwave Plan

... is essentially better warning systems, preparedness and coordination for heat emergencies, with separate work on drought, water security and wildfire response. There is even discussion of strengthening a European firefighting fleet. This is a perfectly ordinary policy creating a couple of properly paid workplaces and official email boxes.

The European Corporation on Critical Raw Materials

Europe needs lithium, rare earths, nickel, cobalt and various other important bits of the periodic table for batteries, electronics, renewable-energy systems and weapons. China dominates those supply chains. The proposal is for Europe to act collectively instead of having individual countries and companies compete separately, because Gd forbid the neighbor might have achieved better relationship with Xi than Brussels.

Migration

The proposed European Emergency Response Framework is meant for sudden mass movements that Brussels considers “engineered” or “weaponised”, meaning another state deliberately pushing migrants toward an EU border to destabilise it. This is of course a new development, because the EU has absolutely not been paying Turkey to keep migrants out for years now.

Under strict conditions, ordinary asylum and border procedures could temporarily become more "flexible". You tell me what THAT means.

Ursula von der Leyen

An issue which sadly hasn't been touched, is the actual person of Ursula von der Leyen herself.

Voting her out would require two-thirds of votes cast and a majority of all 720 MEPs - at least 361. She faced several of those votes and survived them easily.

Her current mandate runs to 31 October 2029. Her chief of staff announced she would not seek a third term.

By then, hopefully, everybody will have forgotten the ugly paper trail.

Good news. The Union has never been stronger.

Bad news. Everything else.