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00:00 Europe editor Armin Georgian is in Strasbourg as well.
00:02 He joins me now live from there.
00:03 Armin, what else did Ursula von der Leyen have to say
00:06 that struck you?
00:07 - Well, she really was trying to take a bird's eye view
00:13 of everything.
00:14 She ended on those words, it's time to think big.
00:17 It's time for Europe to answer the call of history.
00:21 So she really addressed some of those big sort of overarching
00:26 issues that go beyond Europe even, you know,
00:30 artificial intelligence, climate change,
00:34 the environment globally.
00:36 So a look at those kind of big issues.
00:40 But in most of the speech, I got the impression
00:43 she was kind of weaving her way between points
00:46 that would press the right buttons
00:47 with the more right-wing political forces
00:50 and pressing the buttons of the more left-wing
00:53 or progressive, if you will, political groups.
00:57 So in the former category,
00:59 one thing that really struck me is when she said
01:04 that it's time to make Europe work for,
01:08 it's time to make business in Europe easier.
01:12 So simplifying procedures for companies,
01:14 especially medium and small and medium-sized businesses,
01:17 a kind of pro-business message there.
01:19 Similarly, when she talked about the need for a dialogue
01:22 with industry in the context of the green transition,
01:26 I think that was definitely a nod
01:28 to the more right-wing political forces in Europe
01:30 who've been saying that the environmental legislation
01:34 cannot come at too high a cost for businesses
01:38 because that would stifle growth
01:40 and businesses would not be able to recruit more workers.
01:43 So there were definitely points like that.
01:46 In the other column, if you will,
01:47 she talked a lot about, for example,
01:49 protecting the natural habitats in Europe.
01:53 There's quite a lot on social policy as well,
01:55 talking about a new dialogue with social partners,
02:00 and also talking about making Europe work for citizens,
02:06 which I think was,
02:12 there was a lot about the European election context
02:15 because we have this 2024 European election
02:18 coming up next June.
02:19 Very early on in her speech,
02:22 within the first 20 seconds,
02:24 she mentioned that the people
02:25 who would be casting their votes,
02:27 some of them will have been born in 2008,
02:30 so the year of the financial crisis.
02:32 So they've really lived through a period
02:34 of huge kind of ructions and instability in Europe,
02:39 of huge challenges relating to that financial crisis
02:43 that has reverberated through the years.
02:45 They've lived through the COVID pandemic.
02:47 They've seen their life chances reduced
02:49 because of the debt burden of that COVID response,
02:53 and that essentially they will be thinking
02:56 about things like climate change
02:57 and artificial intelligence.
02:58 So she was definitely trying to kind of play
03:01 to those concerns that younger voters may have
03:05 when they actually cast their votes next year.
03:08 - So this was Ursula von der Leyen's last State of the Union
03:12 for her first five-year term in office.
03:15 Would you say that this was a bit of a campaign speech
03:17 for her as well?
03:18 - You know, I did get that impression, Jeanne,
03:21 particularly in the last 20 minutes or so,
03:24 especially when she talked about all the sort of,
03:27 she listed the achievements of the EU
03:31 in the last sort of 20 minutes,
03:33 talking about, you know, we did this on vaccines,
03:35 we did this on natural gas,
03:38 we did this on all the legislation.
03:41 But although it was couched
03:43 in terms of the EU's achievements,
03:45 it felt to me as though she was kind of rattling off
03:48 her own record as EU Commission President.
03:52 And that suggests to me that this is a prelude
03:54 for her to run for a top job.
03:58 There's been a lot of speculation
04:00 that she might want to stay on
04:01 as President of the European Commission for another term.
04:05 After the European elections next year,
04:07 she keeps kind of swatting away any questions
04:11 from journalists about that.
04:12 She's remained very tight-lipped on it.
04:14 But she has certainly done nothing to shut down speculation
04:19 that she wants the top job for another five years.
04:22 But she's also been linked to perhaps
04:24 the NATO Secretary General job
04:27 after Jens Stoltenberg ends his mandate.
04:29 So she, to me, did sound as though
04:31 she was positioning herself for something.
04:35 positioning herself for something.