State of the Union (European Union)

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The State of the Union address, also known as the State of the European Union ^[1] or SOTEU,^[2] is the annual speech addressed by the President of the European Commission to the European Parliament plenary session in September. The State of the Union address of the European Union was instituted by the Lisbon Treaty (with the 2010 Framework Agreement on relations between the European Parliament and the European Commission - Annex IV(5)^[3]), in order to make political life of the Union more democratic and transparent than it previously had been.

The Framework Agreement thus also foresees that the President of the European Commission sends a letter of intent to the President of the European Parliament and the Presidency of the Council of the European Union that sets out in detail the actions the European Commission intends to take by means of legislation and other initiatives until the end of the following year. The address is then followed by a plenary debate ^[4] on the political situation of the Union, the so-called State of the Union debate.