Ursula von der Leyen promises more war, censorship and centralisation
In her 2025 State of the Union speech, von der Leyen signalled her intent to double down on the very policies that have weakened Europe
This is a longer version of an article published originally in UnHerd.
Ursula von der Leyen’s 2025 State of the Union speech offered few surprises. It was the usual mixture of hollow promises, technocratic jargon and hypocrisy-ridden moral posturing that she has made her trademark. In other words, more of the same.
Delivered in the now-familiar Orwellian register, the speech was filled with words like freedom, liberty, peace, prosperity and independence — even as the EU continues to pursue policies that undermine all of these, by pushing for war and militarisation, cracking down on free speech, sabotaging Europe’s economies with self-defeating energy and trade policies, and further subordinating the continent to Washington’s strategic agenda.
As expected, von der Leyen opened with Russia — Brussels’s main obsession. “Europe is in a fight. A fight for a continent that is whole and at peace... a fight for our future”, she declared, announcing a new “European Defence Semester” and a “clear roadmap” for defence readiness by 2030, while emphasising the bloc’s unflinching commitment to NATO. She was effectively announcing that Europeans should prepare for a future marked by permanent militarisation, including a “drone wall” along the EU’s eastern flank and real-time space surveillance so “no movement of forces goes unseen”. She further pledged a “Qualitative Military Edge” programme for Ukraine and a “Drone Alliance” with Kyiv, financed by a controversial “Reparations Loan” backed by profits from frozen Russian assets.
Von der Leyen then turned to Israel and Gaza. Despite overwhelming evidence of atrocities — including what leading humanitarian institutions and genocide experts have described as genocide — the EU has not suspended any trade or cooperation treaties with Israel, let alone imposed sanctions. The contrast with its reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could not be starker.
In an attempt to salvage credibility, von der Leyen announced that the Commission would “put our bilateral support to Israel on hold” and proposed sanctions on “extremist ministers and violent settlers”, along with a partial suspension of the Association Agreement. But by targeting only low-level actors and proposing measures requiring unanimous member state approval — a near impossibility — this amounted to little more than a fig leaf to protect her proclaimed staunch alliance with Israel.
The enlargement agenda was once again in the spotlight. “Ukraine, Moldova, the Western Balkans — their future is in our Union”, she declared, underscoring the EU’s relentless expansionist drive.
On the economy, the speech descended into fantasy. Von der Leyen promised a Scaleup Europe Fund for start-ups, AI Gigafactories, a Battery Booster package and an Industrial Accelerator Act — all aimed, she said, at making the EU a leader in the field of tech and AI. Last year’s speech was full of similar promises — hardly any of which have materialised, as Politico noted.
Addressing one of the main problems weighing on both European industry and households — high energy prices — von der Leyen made the astonishing claim that these were caused by “dependency on Russian fossil fuels”, rather than by the EU’s own decision to cut itself off from affordable Russian gas and replace it with far more expensive American LNG. She then compounded this distortion by insisting that “Europe is on the path of energy independence”, when in reality the continent has simply traded proximity for distance, becoming even more reliant on imports from far-flung suppliers exposed to volatile global markets.
Von der Leyen drew audible laughter when she proclaimed that “the future of cars, and the cars of the future, must be made in Europe” — a hollow slogan that rang absurd against the backdrop of the deep crisis facing Europe’s car industry, in no small part thanks to stifling EU regulation. She even defended the recent EU-US trade deal — widely described as a capitulation — as “the best possible deal out there”.
The speech reached peak surrealism when she unveiled a “European Anti-Poverty Strategy” to “help eradicate poverty by 2050” — despite the fact that poverty rates in the EU have risen since she took office in 2019, not least due to sanctions and energy policies that Brussels itself championed.
But the most ominous part of von der Leyen’s speech came when spoke of “new tools” to enforce the rule of law and combat “information manipulation” and “disinformation”. To this end, she restated the need for a “European Democracy Shield” and “European Centre for Democratic Resilience” to counter allegedly dangerous propaganda — foretelling further crackdowns on free speech and criminalisation of dissent, while announcing further EU-sponsored propaganda campaigns under the banner of “supporting independent journalism and media literacy”.
Ultimately, Von der Leyen’s 2025 State of the Union was less a roadmap for Europe’s future than a catalogue of failures repackaged as triumphs. As usual, it blamed external enemies — Russia, China, disinformation — for Europe’s woes, while ignoring the real problem: the EU’s own supranational model, with its rigid political and economic constraints. By calling for even more centralisation, including an end to unanimity in key policy areas, von der Leyen signalled her intent to double down on the very policies that have weakened Europe. What she offered was not renewal, but more of the same — an ever more militarised, dependent and authoritarian Union.
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Thomas Fazi
Website: thomasfazi.net
Twitter: @battleforeurope
Latest book: The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left (co-authored with Toby Green)
Mrs Dr Goebbels of the Fourth Reich.
The remilitarization component is a signal to the US to expect tons of orders for stuff the EU no longer makes as well as a signal to the EU electorate that any populist uprisings will be forcefully quashed. Just a reminder that the EU Army that was suggested some years ago was never intended for defense against foreign enemies, but against popular uprisings.