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The State of the Union address, also known as the State of the European Union [1] or SOTEU, [2] is the annual speech addressed by the President of the European Commission to the European Parliament plenary session in September. The State of the Union address of the European Union was instituted by the Lisbon Treaty (with the 2010 Framework Agreement on relations between the European Parliament and the European Commission - Annex IV(5) [3] ), in order to make political life of the Union more democratic and transparent than it previously had been.
The Framework Agreement thus also foresees that the President of the European Commission sends a letter of intent to the President of the European Parliament and the Presidency of the Council of the European Union that sets out in detail the actions the European Commission intends to take by means of legislation and other initiatives until the end of the following year. The address is then followed by a plenary debate [4] on the political situation of the Union, the so-called State of the Union debate.
The first State of the Union speech of the European Union was pronounced on 7 September 2010 by President José Manuel Barroso. [5] [6] There he dealt mainly with the economic situation and unemployment issues; [7]
The economic outlook in the European Union today is better than one year ago, not least as a result of our determined action. The recovery is gathering pace, albeit unevenly within the Union. Growth this year will be higher than initially forecast. The unemployment rate, whilst still much too high, has stopped increasing. Clearly, uncertainties and risks remain, not least outside the European Union.
In Barroso's second address, on 28 September 2011, he called for a eurozone bond and a financial transactions tax to stem the eurozone crisis and came out against the Franco-German proposal for an intergovernmental economic eurozone government - stating that that role belonged to the Commission; [8] [9]
For the euro area to be credible – and this not only the message of the federalists, this is the message of the markets – we need a truly Community approach. We need to really integrate the euro area, we need to complete the monetary union with real economic union.
In Barroso's third address, on 12 September 2012, he called for a "decisive deal to complete the EMU", by which he meant a new European treaty to "move towards a Federation of nation states", ahead of the European Parliamentary election in 2014. [10]
He also acknowledged the need for "a serious discussion between the citizens of Europe about the way forward", calling in particular on all pro-European forces to be mobilised against the anti-European agenda of "the populists and the nationalists".
9 September 2015 marked the first address held by Jean-Claude Juncker. It was titled "Time for honesty, unity and solidarity" and opened with the "imperative to act as a union" in order to address the refugee crisis.
There is not enough Europe in this Union. And there is not enough Union in this Union.
Juncker used his 2017 State of the Union address to call for "a stronger single market". [11]
In 2020, on Brexit, Ursula von der Leyen restated the withdrawal agreement is an agreed and ratified divorce agreement:
It (the agreement) cannot be unilaterally changed, disregarded or disciplined. This is a matter of law and trust and good faith.
Her 2021 address has been delivered on 15 September 2021: [4]
Today, and against all critics, Europe is among the world leaders.
More than 70 per cent of adults in the EU are fully vaccinated. We were the only ones to share half of our vaccine production with the rest of the world. We delivered more than 700 million doses to the European people, and we delivered more than another 700 million doses to the rest of the world, to more than 130 countries. We are the only region in the world to achieve that.
A pandemic is a marathon, not a sprint.
The president of the European Commission, also known as president of the College of Commissioners or prime commissioner, is the head of the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union (EU). The president of the commission leads a cabinet of commissioners, referred to as the college. The president is empowered to allocate portfolios among, reshuffle, or dismiss commissioners as necessary. The college directs the commission's civil service, sets the policy agenda and determines the legislative proposals it produces. The commission is the only body that can propose, or draft, bills to become EU laws.
The euro area, commonly called the eurozone (EZ), is a currency union of 20 member states of the European Union (EU) that have adopted the euro (€) as their primary currency and sole legal tender, and have thus fully implemented EMU policies.
José Manuel Durão Barroso is a Portuguese politician and law professor. He previously served from 2002 to 2004 as the 114th prime minister of Portugal and from 2004–2014 as the 11th president of the European Commission.
The president of the European Council is the person presiding over and driving forward the work of the European Council on the world stage. This institution comprises the college of heads of state or government of EU member states as well as the president of the European Commission, and provides political direction to the European Union (EU).
Jean-Claude Juncker is a Luxembourgish politician who was the 23rd prime minister of Luxembourg from 1995 to 2013 and 12th president of the European Commission from 2014 to 2019. He also was Finance Minister from 1989 to 2009 and President of the Eurogroup from 2005 to 2013.
Multi-speed Europe or two-speed Europe is the idea that different parts of the European Union should integrate at different levels and pace depending on the political situation in each individual country. Indeed, multi-speed Europe is currently a reality, with only a subset of EU countries being members of the eurozone and of the Schengen area. Like other forms of differentiatedintegration such as à la carte and variable geometry, "multi-speed Europe" arguably aims to salvage the "widening and deepening of the European Union" in the face of political opposition.
Viviane Adélaïde Reding is a Luxembourgish politician and a former Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Luxembourg. She is a member of the Christian Social People's Party, part of the European People's Party. She previously served as European Commissioner for Education and Culture from 1999 to 2004, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media from 2004 to 2010 and European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship from 2010 to 2014.
The Barroso Commission was the European Commission in office from 22 November 2004 until 31 October 2014. Its president was José Durão Barroso, who presided over 27 other commissioners. On 16 September 2009 Barroso was re-elected by the European Parliament for a further five years and his Commission was approved to take office on 9 February 2010.
Anna Cecilia Malmström is a Swedish politician who served as European Commissioner for Trade from 2014 to 2019. She previously served as European Commissioner for Home Affairs from 2010 to 2014 and Minister for European Union Affairs from 2006 to 2010. She was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Sweden from 1999 to 2006.
International relations between the European Union (EU) and Ukraine are shaped through the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement and the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA). Ukraine is a priority partner within the Eastern Partnership and the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). The EU and Ukraine developed an increasingly close relationship, going beyond co-operation, to gradual economic integration and deepening of political co-operation. On 23 June 2022, the European Council granted Ukraine the status of a candidate for accession to the European Union.
The Executive Vice President of the European Commission for An Economy that Works for People is the member of the European Commission responsible for economic and financial affairs. The position was previously titled Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs and the Euro and European Vice President for the Euro and Social Dialogue from 2014 to 2019. The current executive vice president is Valdis Dombrovskis (EPP).
Events in the year 2010 in the European Union.
The Eurogroup is the recognised collective term for the informal meetings of the finance ministers of the eurozone—those member states of the European Union (EU) which have adopted the euro as their official currency. The group has 20 members. It exercises political control over the currency and related aspects of the EU's monetary union such as the Stability and Growth Pact. The current president of the Eurogroup is Paschal Donohoe, the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform of Ireland.
The 2014 European Parliament election was held in the European Union (EU) between 22 and 25 May 2014. It was the 8th parliamentary election since the first direct elections in 1979, and the first in which the European political parties fielded candidates for President of the Commission.
Brazil and the European Union established diplomatic relations in 1960. The European Union and Brazil have close historical, cultural, economic and political ties. At the 1st EU-Brazil summit, in 2007, Brazil entered in a strategic partnership with the European Union, strengthening their ties. This new relationship places Brazil high on the EU's political map.
The history of the European Union from 2004 to the present is the current timeline of the European Union. It is a period of significant upheaval and reform following the 2004 enlargement of the European Union. The EU has taken on ten new members, eight of which were initially much poorer than the EU average, and took in a further two in 2007 with many more on the way. It created the euro a few years before and had to expand this, and the Schengen Area to its new members. However this was overshadowed by the late-2000s recession and damaging disputes over the European Constitution and its successor, the Treaty of Lisbon. Throughout this period, the European People's Party has been the largest group in the European Parliament and provides every President of the European Commission.
The European Union (EU) and South Korea are important trade partners: As of April 2023, Korea is the EU's third-largest importer. Excluding European countries, Korea has secured the third place on the list, following China and the United States. And the EU is Korea's third largest export destination. The two have signed a free trade agreement which came into effect at end of 2011. Furthermore, South Korea is the only country in the world with the three agreements covering economics, politics and security in effect as of 2020.
The European banking union refers to the transfer of responsibility for banking policy from the member state-level to the union-wide level in several EU member states, initiated in 2012 as a response to the 2009 Eurozone crisis. The motivation for the banking union was the fragility of numerous banks in the Eurozone, and the identification of a vicious circle between credit conditions for these banks and the sovereign credit of their respective home countries. In several countries, private debts arising from a property bubble were transferred to the respective sovereign as a result of banking system bailouts and government responses to slowing economies post-bubble. Conversely, weakness in sovereign credit resulted in deterioration of the balance sheet position of the banking sector, not least because of high domestic sovereign exposures of the banks.
Events in the year 2014 in the European Union.