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Watch: European Commissioners react to Ursula von der Leyen's speech

After Ursula von der Leyen's annual State of the Union speech, Euronews spoke to Commissioners Valdis Dombrovskis, Maroš Šefčovič, Wopke Hoekstra and Andrius Kubilius about what to expect following the President's address.

READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2026/09/17/watch-european-commissioners-react-to-ursula-von-der-leyens-speech

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00:00Already two years in the new European Commission's mandate and, if anything, the urgency of strengthening our security and defence
00:07has increased.
00:09As regards NATO, we have been emphasising from the very beginning that once we started to work on this area
00:16of security and defence at the EU level,
00:19which is relatively new because previously EU was not doing this, that we are doing this to complement NATO, not
00:25to compete with NATO or not to contradict NATO.
00:28There is a lot of capacities we need to build up because we see the war in Ukraine has been
00:34turned into a drone war and also Russia is producing like millions of drones per year.
00:42So we certainly need to strengthen our drone defence capabilities.
00:47It's clearly underlying of the argumentation we are using with our Chinese partners.
00:53From the tonality of the speech of the president von der Leyen is clear that it will be a big
01:00disappointment and the political interest will be to look for the solution through other instruments.
01:07We will fight tooth and nail for every job, for every workplace, for every company, for every factory because we
01:14know that the industry is a fabric of European society
01:19and we know that all the revenue which is generated by our highly competitive industry is the contribution to the
01:27European way of life, to the European social model and therefore my message to my Chinese partners was that this
01:35scope will be on trade.
01:36The fact that Canada and the European Union both feel compelled to take such an extraordinary step, I think is
01:45a sign of the times we live in.
01:47The world is in turmoil, that many of the rules that we thought were holy and were to be respected,
01:55you know, no longer do.
01:56And therefore you have to look for allies who share the same values, have the same outlook, have the same
02:03interests in geopolitics, in climate, in the economy, in trade.
02:08The characters are clear about how to make NATO stronger, because what is European defence architecture, what it will take
02:18care about is how to make Europe much stronger in defence.
02:22And this is what our Transatlantic partners are asking with their concept of NATO 3.0, where they are asking
02:31us, as Europeans, to take primary responsibility.
02:34Peace through France means that Ukraine needs to be stronger, and Ukraine can be stronger if we shall increase even
02:43that support which we are providing now.
02:46Very successfully, we are implementing, of all, to pay in support loans, 60 billion, but it looks like that it's
02:52not enough.
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