State of the Union 2026: Was die Rede zur Lage der Union für Unternehmen bedeutet
In her State of the Union address on 16 September 2026, Commission President von der Leyen reaffirmed the Commission’s course and adopted a more assertive tone for the coming months. Europe’s competitiveness is becoming a matter of security, energy, raw materials, artificial intelligence and climate resilience. With the ‘One Europe, One Market’ roadmap, a new banking package, the European Critical Raw Materials Company and a planned European Security Council, the Commission is setting a clear course for the forthcoming legislative and budgetary processes.
Key initiatives such as the Security Council, the EU Kids Act and the Critical Raw Materials Company do not yet have a legal form. It is precisely now, in this preliminary phase, that the future interpretative authority will be determined.
In our analysis, we categorise the speech’s key messages and highlight, on a sector-by-sector basis, what they specifically mean for the defence industry, the energy sector, the financial sector and the manufacturing industry: from new instruments for strategic enablers, through the pace of grid expansion and domestic energy generation, to the banking package and faster approval procedures for strategic projects.
As a public affairs and strategy consultancy at the interface between business and politics, PANTARHEI Advisors supports companies in identifying these dynamics at an early stage and effectively representing their interests within the European process – in Vienna, Brussels and Munich.