On 10 September 2025, President Ursula von der Leyen delivered her State of the Union address, covering a wide range of topics of strategic importance for Europe’s future, from economic competitiveness and climate action to security, defence, and digital transformation. In a speech largely influenced by the current geopolitical crisis, she reiterated the EU support for Ukraine and addressed the crisis in Gaza, while stressing the importance of emancipating Europe from dependency in the fields of defence and energy. 

Research and innovation topics were quite prominent in the Commission’s President speech who defined them as instrumental to the achievement of the EU strategic priorities linked to Europe’s long-term prosperity and competitiveness. Referring to science as one of the most valuable global goods, one that “has no passport, gender, ethnicity or political colour”, von der Leyen emphasised the importance of establishing a “fifth freedom” as part of the Single Market Roadmap to 2028. This initiative will allow for the free movement of knowledge and innovation, with a view to removing barriers for research collaboration across borders, thus, maintaining the EU’s commitment to become a leader in global science. She has also emphasised the Commission’s earlier announced plans to double the budget of Horizon Europe alongside the European Competitiveness Fund, with investments targeting areas such as clean technologies, health, biotechnology, and space (see ACA Newsletter – Education Europe, July 2025). On top of that, the proposed Scaleup Europe Fund will provide support to young, innovative companies in cutting-edge sectors like AI and quantum computing. 

In her address, von der Leyen stressed the need to keep Europe attractive for young talent, by tackling the challenges faced by students and researchers. She claimed that Europe will “step up where others have stepped away”, announcing a key initiative to attract and retain researchers and academics: the “Choose Europe” package, allocating EUR500 million between 2025 and 2027 (for more details, see ACA Newsletter – Education Europe, May 2025). She also acknowledged the growing issue of student housing affordability, committing to the launch, within this same year, of a European Affordable Housing Plan. 

Surprisingly, the topic of “skills” has been fully left aside in the SOTEU 2025, despite its high political prominence following the recent adoption of a communication on a Union of skills (see ACA Newsletter – Education Europe, March 2025). Although higher education and research and innovation are part of the same value chain, offering much needed talent for Europe’s competitiveness, education and research topics seem to be rather disentangled in the new political vision.