BRUSSELS — Walk through the EU Quarter of Brussels and you’ll see posters plastered on walls and telephone poles asking European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to give animal welfare a starring role in her State of the Union address.

“Your words matter,” the posters read. “Include animals in your speech.”

As von der Leyen prepares for her big speech on Sept. 16, everyone from the largest lobby groups to cash-strapped NGOs — and even apparently guerrilla campaigners (none of the big animal welfare groups POLITICO spoke to took responsibility for the posters) — are making their pitch for a few precious seconds of the Commission president’s time.

Some are taking the conventional approach. Last month, almost 200 industry associations and national groups signed a letter addressed to von der Leyen demanding she use her speech to commission an expansive, Mario Draghi-style report into the bloc’s appetite for fossil fuels.

Others are a little more in-your-face. Alcohol lobby group SpiritsEurope has set up shop at Place du Luxembourg, where it has organized four days’ worth of events and — naturally — drinks receptions. It also conducted a competitiveness “temperature check” among its members to see how they are feeling, and to hammer home the point that the Commission could be listening more to the demands of an industry that feels somewhat overlooked.

Von der Leyen “can bend the system to her will,” said SpiritsEurope Director General Mark Titterington. “That’s why we take the speech so seriously.”

“It sets the direction, sets the tempo and helps to condition the environment,” he added. “The words that are in there are pored over for meaning.”

Yet it’s not just the words in the speech that lobbyists and advocates are interested in — it’s the broader message.

“We’re not looking for the president simply to say the word ‘health’,” said Milka Sokolović, director general at EPHA, an EU-wide public health NGO.

She added that despite cuts to the organization — the health NGO has lost 40% of its staff since the Commission slashed its grants last year — it has been making “very concrete asks directly to the Commission, including von der Leyen, on the substance we would expect the speech to reflect.”

That’s in part because the speech acts as a litmus test of what messages have actually cut through. 

“When specific asks have already been made through the normal channels, the SOTEU is an opportunity for the president to show whether they have translated into political priorities,” Sokolović said.

“A mention in that speech is not symbolic; it sends a signal to commissioners, to member states and to the Council that this file matters to the institution’s leadership,” said Animal Equality’s Vice-President of Europe Matteo Cupi. 

Failure to get a mention in the State of the European Union doesn’t mean a topic isn’t important — but a line in the speech does show political will to take action.

“Legislation, budgets and implementation create the actual change,” said Sokolović. “But high-level political commitments set the direction. They decide what gets political attention and momentum in the first place. That is why the SOTEU matters.”

“A mention is a signal, a specific commitment is politically meaningful, a commitment with a deliverable and timetable is the real outcome.”

But whether lobbyists can even get the access that matters is another question.

The Commission president “keeps her cards exceedingly close to her chest in the whole process,” said one former Commission cabinet member, granted anonymity to speak freely. “In the end, von der Leyen writes the whole thing herself — there are literally four people involved,” the person said, adding that the speech is written only in the few days before it’s presented.

Among the few who do enjoy open access to the Commission’s upper echelons — such as chemicals lobby Cefic — the SOTEU is an “important milestone,” but still only “one step in a broader policy cycle,” said a spokesperson for the group. “What ultimately matters is how political priorities are translated into concrete measures and implemented in practice.”

Tech CEOs have also kept a direct line into von der Leyen. Their main lobby group, DigitalEurope, counted a mention of its AI & Tech Declaration in last year’s speech as an “important signal that industry’s voice was being heard,” said Director General Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl.

She also said the presence of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at this year’s event is “a real opportunity to take the EU-Canada partnership to the next level,” with the lobby group keen to act as “a bridge” between Europe and its international partners.

One reason why the speech is so important for lobbyists and NGOs is that there are sometimes surprises within. In 2023’s edition, for example, von der Leyen dropped a bombshell, announcing an anti-subsidy probe into Chinese electric vehicles. European carmakers’ stocks spiked within the hour. 

Pauline Bastidon, SpiritsEurope’s director of competitiveness and trade, said one upshot of that announcement was a retaliatory move by China into the EU alcohol sector.

“We are still paying the price for that,” she said. “There can be some very concrete consequences for what is said in the SOTEU speech.”

Additional reporting by Gerardo Fortuna and Max Griera.

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