Oops, missed this, … published on the 21st October, this article was made on 5th November and is unfinished. A summary of the defence & security programmes and the social cohesion programmes would be useful.
Links
VDL’s State of the Union speech, landing page which hosts the video, and text. This page has a series of categorises bullet summaries, competitiveness (6), defence and security (5), social fairness (6), quality of life (5), democracy (5) includes anti-corruption, and a global Europe aka trade and peace (3).
The Commission Work Plan, has a landing page, and they have published the workplan which has a supplementary documents’ index.
I made a diigo post of the work plan, highlighting and commenting on it.
- EU Institutional Workplan 2026
on November 5, 2025 at 4:11 pm“COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE AND THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS aka the EU Work Plan 26. “In a world of imperial ambitions and imperial wars, a world in which […]
What do I think?
This would be better organised as the Commission has organised the plan, competitiveness (6), defence and security (5), social fairness (6), quality of life (5), democracy (5) includes anti-corruption, and a global Europe aka trade and peace (3).
Democracy
On democracy, few +ive promises, and nothing on citizen’s assemblies nor the ECI. Although the democracy shield remains in place and will be progressed, unless the EU caves to Trump’s demands.
On agriculture, there’s no promises (again) on responding to the “End the cage age” ECI.
On anti-corruption, there is cross party unanimity on its importance, although the ECR and others oppose the imposition of democratic conditionality on the release of EU funds.
This needs a statement on their media reform plans, it’s unlikey that they will make significant legislative constraints on privately [billionaire] owned media organisations. See also Digital market regulation in the EU includes the Democracy Shield and some brief comments on the Media Freedom Act.
Single Market
The omnibus regulation and the 28th regime. The omnibus package is described on its EU page. Is this just minimising regulation and rules? However the Commission is reducing protections under the GDPR as part of the omnibus regulation and is also weakening the EU’s environmental protection. The latest news on climate change and COP is reported at E3G. (5/11/2025).
The 28th regime is the origination of a common commercial law regime; this may be the means by which genuine pan-European companies can be regulated by a common code. It might also be a trojan in which EU entities can be created but probably not as the Commission are with drawing its current proposals as the Council i.e the member states will not agree the current proposals.
The work plan makes further reference to The Draghi report on EU competitiveness. I may need to read this. This seems to have been supplemented by Enrico Letta’s Report on the Future of the Single Market
The Middle East
The work plan does mention the middle east, but the words used underline the failure to agree on the big questions. It says,
… the immediate priority in Gaza is to ensure sufficient humanitarian aid reaches the population, the EU will also contribute by providing support for the governance and reform of the Palestinian Authority and funding reconstruction, including through convening the Palestine Donor Group and by strengthening the presence of its EU CSDP missions.
See also https://davelevy.info/wiki/my-eu-start-page/ which points to other EU resources on this wiki.