EU chief to lay out priorities and vision for tackling the bloc's challenges in major speech

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will deliver a major state of the European Union speech on Wednesday setting out her priorities for the next year and her vision for tackling the challenges faced by the world’s biggest trading bloc.

The content of von der Leyen ’s address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, has been kept under wraps. Political groups in the assembly have lobbied to get their priorities and pet projects included.

But the speech is likely to touch on AI, climate change and the fires that have swept Europe this summer, as well as protection for children online, Russia’s war on Ukraine, conflict across the Middle East and international trade tensions.

Last year, she warned that Europe must stake out its independence as the continued to impose tariffs on the world and members if the Trump administration criticized the bloc’s migration policies, warning of “civilizational erasure.”

“Europe is in a fight,” von der Leyen said. “A fight for our values and our democracies.”

“Battle lines for a New World order based on power are being drawn right now,” she said, adding that the EU “must fight for its place in a world in which many major powers are either ambivalent or openly hostile to Europe.”

The event has become an annual ritual modeled on the State of the Union addresses to Congress by U.S. presidents, but it won’t be broadcast widely and few of the European Union’s 450 million citizens across 27 member countries are likely to tune in.

It’s a carefully crafted communications exercise in front of often applauding lawmakers that is appreciated most by EU insiders. Von der Leyen tends to conclude with what has become her rallying cry: “Long Live Europe.”

Routinely, its themes are aspirational. They touch on von der Leyen’s hopes and plans for the commission — the EU’s increasingly powerful executive branch – over the coming year but often lack detail. Critics say the commission’s work is opaque.

Eric Maurice, an analyst at the European Policy Centre think-tank, warned against her using it “to placate political groups” or “to raise the Commission President’s profile and extend the Commission’s political and institutional domain.”

“The EU is facing the crumbling of all the premises on which it was built. The rules-based order with benevolent free-trade and U.S. friendship and support is disappearing,” Maurice said.

The commission proposes laws used across the 27 countries and watches to ensure that those already in place are not being broken. It negotiates trade on behalf of all its members and is Europe’s top antitrust investigator.

At its helm stands the 67-year-old former German defense minister, who has become a prominent figure at summits with leaders around the world, despite being a political appointee who hasn’t been elected to Europe’s top post.

Von der Leyen is hard to ignore. She has accumulated influence over 7 years in office by securing vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic, managing the energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion and support to Ukraine through the war.

She also seems to have the begrudging respect of Trump. She, her chief of cabinet, and her trade commissioners have labored to limit the damage caused by Trump’s tariff war to the European economy.

But the Trump administration has also been riled by the commission’s crackdown on Big Tech companies, many of them in the United States, over their perceived flouting of Europe’s data regulations.

Ahead of the speech, the commission has set up a website dedicated to its leader and the event and has been distributing brochures laying out their achievements over the last 12 months.

The list is considerable, and includes sealing new trade agreements, boosting economic competitiveness, cutting energy costs, spurring defense investment, providing billions of euros in support to Ukraine and slapping sanctions on hundreds of Russian officials and organizations.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen arrives at the International Space Summit at the Grand Palais in Paris, Thursday, Sept. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard, Pool)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen arrives to attend the International Space Summit in Paris Thursday, Sept. 10, 2026. (Abdul Saboor/Pool Photo via AP)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivers a speech at the International Space Summit at the Grand Palais in Paris, Thursday, Sept. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard, Pool)

French president Emmanuel Macron, left, greets European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the International Space Summit at the Grand Palais in Paris, Thursday, Sept. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard, Pool)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen arrives to attend the International Space Summit in Paris Thursday, Sept. 10, 2026. (Abdul Saboor/Pool Photo via AP)

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — An Australian court ruled Tuesday that one of three serial killers convicted over the murders of 11 people in one of the country's most notorious criminal cases can be released from prison, rejecting a state government's bid to block his parole.

The victims were killed over seven years, and most of their bodies were found in 1999 in barrels of acid in Snowtown, a small town north of the South Australia state capital, Adelaide. The discovery led the crimes to become known as the “Bodies-in-Barrels” murders.

Three judges of the South Australia Court of Appeal upheld a parole board decision made last month to release the youngest of the three convicted murderers, James Vlassakis.

Vlassakis, now 46, was 18 when his crimes began in 1998. He pleaded guilty to four murders, including those of a half brother and stepbrother. He became a star witness for the prosecution, and was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 26 years, which expired in August of last year.

He was granted parole in December but the state government succeeded in overturning that parole board decision.

The discovery of dismembered bodies in a derelict Snowtown bank branch and a yearlong trial that ended in 2003 captured the nation's attention at the time, inspiring books and the 2011 movie “Snowtown.”

Parole board chair Frances Nelson argued Vlassakis had “always been remorseful and contrite.” He had not been diagnosed with any anti-social personality disorder and his prison behavior has been “excellent,” she said.

South Australia Attorney-General Kyam Maher, who had unsuccessfully challenged the parole decision, instead argued that the traumatic nature of the crimes justified keeping Vlassakis behind bars.

“The gravity and the effect this has had on South Australia (and) the need for community safety were always the primary concerns of the state government,” Maher told reporters.

“This is definitely indelibly marked on the psyche of South Australia. These were horrific crimes that were committed against innocent people. Families of victims, friends and whole communities were deeply affected by this,” Maher said.

Nelson told reporters the parole board “would not have recommended his release on parole if we thought he was a risk.”

"So for the attorney general to say that he presented a risk, I think, caused unnecessary alarm in the community,” Nelson said.

Vlassakis was the stepson of the killers’ ringleader, John Bunting. Bunting killed people he suspected of being pedophiles or gay. He ordered some killed because he disliked overweight people and drug users. Victims’ social security payments were stolen.

Bunting was convicted of 11 murders and his neighbor, Robert Wagner, was convicted of 10. Both had been active in neo-Nazi groups. Charges of a 12th murder were dropped because of a lack of evidence. Both were sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

Another accomplice, Mark Haydon, who pleaded guilty to helping dispose of two bodies, was released from prison in 2024 after serving a 25-year sentence. A jury had failed to reach verdicts on two murder charges against him.

The former bank building where dismembered bodies were stored in barrels is photographed in Snowtown, Australia, on Oct. 22, 2002. (Rob Hutchison/AAP Image via AP)