The European Union has survived — and thrived — in the past five years and is ready for the next challenge: artificial intelligence.
That’s one of the prominent messages Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivered in her annual State of the Union address — the last such speech ahead of the looming European election in 2024, and thus possibly in her career as leader of the EU executive.
Since her 2019 speech as president-elect, Ursula von der Leyen has stewarded the EU through a pandemic, economic crisis and a war on European soil.
With EU elections now only eight months away, this year’s speech focused on the Commission’s work over the course of its mandate, with von der Leyen claiming a 90 percent success rate in delivering on political guidelines she presented in 2019 (although this figure has been contested.)
Looking to the future, the speech paid more attention than previous years to the impact of artificial intelligence and technology on the European Union, and plans for significant enlargement of the bloc.
We crunched the numbers on von der Leyen’s latest, and possibly last, script.
With research from POLITICO’s Research and Analysis Division.