Breaking Its Own Rules

Suspension would require a unanimous vote by all twenty-seven member states. Yet European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and several individual states, including Germany, Hungary, and Italy, are steadfast in their support for the Israeli government and in opposing any such change. Under these conditions, expecting a unanimous vote to suspend the deal with Israel would be delusional.

The ruling parties in Hungary and Italy epitomize the rise of Europe’s neofascist right, which despite its antisemitic roots has allied itself with its Israeli counterparts. Despite recent perfunctory criticisms, the German government shows no sign of relenting in its diplomatic or material support for Israel. It claims that this support is part of its Staatsräson, branding as antisemitic any opposition to Zionism — even by Germany’s own Jewish citizens — as well as criticism of Israeli governments and even the mere recognition of Palestinian human rights.

Moreover, the notion that Association Agreements should be reviewed is nothing new. All such agreements contain so-called conditionalities — standards against which the agreement must be reviewed every year. Performance against those benchmarks is meant to lead either to the deepening or the scaling back of relations. This is what the EU calls the “more for more/less for less” principle.

Article 2 of the agreement states that EU-Israel relations, including “all the provisions of the Agreement itself,” must be “based on respect for human rights.” When the Dutch foreign minister Caspar Veldkamp called for the vote to review the agreement, he did so precisely by suggesting that Israel had violated Article 2, since its latest blockage of humanitarian aid to Gaza constitutes a breach of international humanitarian law.

Thus, the EU’s own rules already oblige it to carry out the assessment that member states voted for. What is extraordinary, therefore, is not the recent vote for a review — but rather that the agreement has never been seriously reviewed before, despite the Israeli government’s litany of human rights abuses well before 2023. Indeed, EU members voted down last year’s request for a review by Spain and Ireland, which came when the Israeli military’s devastation of Gaza had long been in progress.

Empty Words

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the EU never intended these human rights conditionalities to be meaningful. It has never defined what the criteria for these reviews of human rights are supposed to be. This allows the EU as a whole — including the states now in favor of reviewing relations with Israel — to routinely gloss over human rights abuses in Israel/Palestine, not to mention many other countries with which the union has similar agreements, while preserving the facade of respect for “democracy, human rights and fundamental values.”

Like the UK’s suspension of trade talks, but not of trade itself, this vote is a rhetorical move with few concrete consequences. The same goes for the recent joint communiqué issued by the French, Canadian, and UK governments. Western media outlets presented the statement as being tougher than the collective EU position. However, the communiqué opposes only “the expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza” — in other words, it objects to the extension and intensification of Israel’s assault, not the devastation so far.

Nor does it mention Israel’s violations of international humanitarian law. The UK foreign minister David Lammy recently received his Israeli counterpart Gideon Sa’ar in London and assured Sa’ar that the British government would block an arrest warrant that legal groups sought for his involvement in war crimes. While the UK summoned Israel’s ambassador after its joint statement with France and Canada, it continued to fly surveillance and reconnaissance missions in support of Israel, over or close to Gaza’s airspace.

Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez has taken the most prominent stand among European governments in criticizing Israel, even stating in the Spanish parliament that “we do not do business with a genocidal state.” However, the Podemos leader Ione Belarra, a former minister in the Sánchez government, was able to list dozens of contracts between Spanish state institutions and Israeli arms and intelligence companies, including ones that continued after the government’s original statement that it would suspend existing arms deals.

Euro-Washing

If European governments were serious about reining in Israel’s devastating use of violence, they would start by doing what they are already obliged to do under Association Agreement rules and under international humanitarian law.

This would include halting arms contracts with Israeli companies, suspending intelligence cooperation, and enforcing existing EU rules on commercial, cultural, and research exchanges — not to mention supporting the International Court of Justice’s investigation of Israel’s violation of the Genocide Convention and enforcing the arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court against Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant.

The EU’s long record of ignoring human rights abuses by associated countries has culminated in the spectacle of the union twiddling its thumbs in the face of the daily devastation wrought by Israel on Palestinians. Within its own borders, the repression of rights to free speech and free assembly for those who defend Palestinian human rights and demand the application of international law is rapidly eroding the foundations of the continent’s much-vaunted liberal democracies.

Ultimately, it is possible that Europe may be finally starting to acknowledge its moral and legal obligations to uphold universal human rights and equality of all before the law. This would be welcome, though too little and too late. Most likely, however, EU leaders’ recent pronouncements will remain empty attempts at Euro-washing their own complicity.