\u201cEurope is in a fight.\u201d <\/p>\n
With those words, Ursula von der Leyen set the tone for her State of the European Union speech \u2014 framing this as Europe\u2019s \u201cIndependence Moment.\u201d She proposed sanctions on extremist Israeli ministers over Gaza; floated using frozen Russian assets for Ukraine; and backed calls for a drone wall to protect the bloc\u2019s eastern flank against Russia. She also pledged action on jobs, poverty and housing.<\/p>\n
But were those fighting words enough to bridge the gap between promises and reality \u2014 or did they simply paper over a fraying coalition?<\/p>\n
Host Sarah Wheaton is joined by Rym Momtaz, editor-in-chief of Carnegie Europe\u2019s Strategic Europe blog; Carsten Brzeski, ING\u2019s global head of macro research; and Sorcha Edwards, secretary general of Housing Europe, to unpack the geopolitics, economics and social policy in the speech. We\u2019ll also hear from POLITICO\u2019s Max Griera in Strasbourg, with on-the-ground reactions from MEPs \u2014 and look across the border to France, where President Emmanuel Macron faces fresh political turmoil after the government of Prime Minister Fran\u00e7ois Bayrou collapsed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cEurope is in a fight.\u201d With those words, Ursula von der Leyen set the tone for her State…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[17648,1395,6641,473,32,5898,2595,34,2000,26256,137613,8954,299,65408,5187,7058,36,37,38,1824,1450,84488,837,1815,7163,30995,11665,1814,770,332,142998,2663,12338,479,1201,657,49,1220,335],"class_list":{"0":"post-417327","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-affordable-housing","9":"tag-china","10":"tag-competitiveness","11":"tag-defense","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-donald-tusk","14":"tag-drones","15":"tag-emmanuel-macron","16":"tag-eu","17":"tag-eu-confidential","18":"tag-eu-state-of-the-union","19":"tag-eu-us-trade-talks","20":"tag-europe","21":"tag-europes-housing-challenge","22":"tag-european","23":"tag-european-defense","24":"tag-france","25":"tag-francois-bayrou","26":"tag-french-politics","27":"tag-germany","28":"tag-greece","29":"tag-iratxe-garcia-perez","30":"tag-israel","31":"tag-israel-hamas-war","32":"tag-israeli-palestinian-conflict","33":"tag-manfred-weber","34":"tag-meps","35":"tag-palestine","36":"tag-poland","37":"tag-russia","38":"tag-rym-momtaz","39":"tag-sanctions","40":"tag-sebastien-lecornu","41":"tag-tariffs","42":"tag-trade","43":"tag-ukraine","44":"tag-united-states","45":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","46":"tag-war-in-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}