EU Annual Legislative Priorities

Key Chapter Title List

1. Enhancing Defense Readiness and Security Resilience
2. Boosting Competitiveness and Deepening the Single Market
3. Advancing a Fair and Competitive Green Transition
4. Promoting High-Quality Employment and Social Cohesion
5. Comprehensively Addressing External Borders and Migration Challenges
6. Upholding Democracy, Rule of Law, and Fundamental Rights
7. Projecting Stability and Leadership in International Affairs
8. Accelerating Legislative Proposals for Simplification and Growth

Document Introduction

This document is the "Joint Declaration on the EU's Legislative Priorities for 2026" jointly issued by the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union, and the European Commission. Against a rapidly evolving and challenging global landscape, the declaration aims to consolidate consensus among the three institutions, clarifying the core focus of EU legislative action for 2026. It adopts a unified, urgent, and ambitious approach to implement the objectives set out in the "Political Guidelines 2024-2029" and the "Strategic Agenda 2024-2029". The declaration emphasizes a focused and efficient legislative strategy, complemented by a comprehensive simplification approach, aiming to systematically enhance the EU's competitiveness and resilience.

The declaration unfolds around seven key policy objectives. The primary goal is to continuously enhance the EU's defense readiness and security resilience. Specific pathways include: mobilizing investment to strengthen infrastructure, ensuring defense preparedness, promoting defense R&D and procurement, increasing the supply of European defense products, revitalizing the defense technology and industrial base, enhancing interoperability, and striving to establish a genuine single market for defense materials by 2030. Simultaneously, the declaration plans to consolidate common security by strengthening crisis response coordination, protecting critical infrastructure and external borders, improving military mobility, and combating organized crime. Furthermore, supporting Ukraine and advancing the accession processes of candidate countries, as well as eliminating Russian oil and gas from the energy mix and promoting a just and lasting peace, are also core concerns within the security dimension.

In the economic and competitiveness domain, the declaration commits to redoubling efforts to remove bottlenecks, covering areas from an ambitious horizontal simplification and better regulation agenda to unlocking capital channels, reducing energy prices, promoting investment, supporting R&D innovation and scaling up, deepening the single market, and establishing a genuine energy union by 2030. Accelerating all legislative proposals with simplification and competitiveness dimensions is listed as a top priority. Regarding the green transition, the EU is committed to ensuring a fair, just, pragmatic, cost-effective, socially balanced, affordable, and competitive clean transition process. It also focuses on strengthening technological sovereignty, investing in key technologies such as artificial intelligence, and building technological leadership and indispensability by reducing strategic dependencies, strengthening supply chains, and leveraging public procurement to incentivize investment in Europe.

On the social dimension, the declaration aims to promote high-quality employment to match evolving labor market needs, take measures to address the cost of living, affordability, and housing crises, and continue to promote economic, social, and territorial cohesion, supporting the prosperous, sustainable, and inclusive development of regions and cities. The competitiveness and level playing field for agriculture and fisheries also receive attention. In the area of rule of law and security, the declaration emphasizes a comprehensive approach to migration challenges, including fully implementing existing laws, intensifying efforts to complete legislative work on preventing and combating irregular migration, and promoting and accelerating returns, while combating the instrumentalization of migration, human trafficking, and smuggling. The EU is determined to defend democracy, the rule of law, and fundamental rights, protect electoral processes from disinformation and foreign interference, support independent journalism and media literacy, and ensure a safe online environment, particularly for minors.

Finally, the declaration reaffirms the EU's determination to project stability, fairness, solidarity, and strength in an uncertain world. This includes steadfastly upholding the rules-based order, maintaining leadership in development cooperation and humanitarian aid, and deepening mutually beneficial international partnerships. The three institutions commit to efficiently advancing the aforementioned common priorities based on the principle of sincere cooperation, with particular priority given to the specific legislative proposals listed in the annex aimed at stimulating economic growth, simplifying legislation, reducing regulatory burdens, and ensuring proper implementation. The institutional leaders will closely monitor the timely and effective implementation of this joint declaration and conduct regular monitoring of the progress of 2026 priority proposals to ensure their smooth advancement.