“Some of the most senior figures in the Brussels bureaucracy have no red lines. They just have red carpets, which they roll out whenever Israel’s advocates ask them to do so.”
In recent months, European governments have ratcheted up their public criticism of Israel’s criminal actions, as the fallout of the war it began with the US in West Asia threatens to upend the global economy. There have even been murmurs of disquiet from the government of Germany, Israel’s biggest benefactor and long-time protector in the region.
“Regarding Iran, yes, I’ve become disillusioned,” Chancellor Friedrich Merz told a press conference in Berlin regarding the US’ lack of an “exit strategy” and resulting “humiliation” at the hands of Iran. “The US and Israel assumed, right from the start, that this problem would be resolved within a few days, and we now have to acknowledge that it isn’t”.
The remarks come just after a week after Merz voiced reservations over Israel’s escalation of illegal settlement expansions in the West Bank. After a telephone conversation with Benjamin Netanhayu, Merz’s spokesman Stefan Kornelius sent out a press release:
“In the conversation, the chancellor expressed his deep concern about developments in the Palestinian territories. There must be no de facto partial annexation of the West Bank.”
Even this mildest of ticking offs was enough to elicit a blistering rejoinder from Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich:
On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, the German Chancellor should bow his head and apologize a thousand times on behalf of Germany, rather than daring to preach morality to us on how to conduct ourselves against the Nazis of our generation—who murdered, raped, slaughtered,…
— בצלאל סמוטריץ’ (@bezalelsm) April 13, 2026
Days later, Berlin was already busy making amends…
🚨 JUST IN: Germany has approved a new €167 million arms sale to Israel, which is accused of committing genocide in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/gZE0OIiqwP
— GBX (@GBX_Press) April 20, 2026
On the surface, relations between Europe and Israel have never been as strained as they are today, especially now that Netanyahu’s close friend, Hungarian President Viktor Orban, has left the picture. Meanwhile, over a million EU citizens have signed a petition calling for the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement via a European Citizens’ Initiative, which was enough to force the EU Council to at least consider the proposal.
“Israel is losing its last friends in Europe as diplomatic collapse deepens across the continent”, warns Itamar Eichner for Ynet Global, the English language edition of Israel’s largest news website:
Even Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a close friend of Israel, has decided to downgrade a security and defense agreement with Jerusalem.
Other countries such as France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Slovenia and others were lost to us long ago. We are now in a unique situation, one we have never faced before, in which almost every European country is expressing very harsh public criticism of the State of Israel. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said today, in response to Spain’s removal from the joint headquarters in Kiryat Gat, that “international law is currently being fundamentally violated by one state, and that is the government of Israel.” The same Sanchez only this week reopened Spain’s embassy in Tehran, while Spain has no ambassador in Israel.
The last fortress was Hungary, and that fortress fell on Sunday. New Prime Minister Peter Magyar has already said he will examine every decision regarding Israel on its own merits and has no interest in continuing the policy pursued by his predecessor, Viktor Orban.
Yet when the EU was given the chance to finally turn years of empty words and promises into real, meanginful action last week, it chickened out.
The governments of Spain, Slovenia and Ireland had proposed to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement. More than 350 former diplomats, 60 NGOs and a UN Special Rapporteur had also endorsed the proposal to suspend the agreement, reminding EU ministers of their obligation to “employ all reasonable means to prevent genocide” — particularly now that Israel’s genocidal actions are now being applied to southern Lebanon.
The association agreement, now in its 26th year of existence, is the framework for EU-Israel relations, granting Israel preferential access to EU markets, writes Brussels-based foreign policy analyst Eldar Mamedov for the Quincy Institute’s Responsible Statecraft:
That’s meaningful since the EU is collectively Israel’s main trading partner, accounting for 32% of Israel’s total trade, with 28% of Israel’s exports going to the EU. The agreement also provides for cooperation in other key areas, such as diplomatic dialogue and research.
The pact also enables Israel’s participation in the EU-funded Horizon program on research and innovation, which made a total of 1.11 billion euros available for Israeli companies, universities, and public organizations until 2027. Rights groups fear that some of these funds could be spent on dual-use technologies facilitating militarization, repression, and surveillance.
Even the EU Commission itself concluded last year that Israel may be in breach of the deal’s human rights clause, namely Article 2, which stipulates that “cooperation is based on respect for human rights and democratic principles”. The arguments in favour of suspending the association agreement are overwhelming, explains Mamedov:
It is based on this clause that Spain, Slovenia, and Ireland proposed to suspend the agreement. On April 21, EU foreign ministers met in Luxembourg to discuss that proposal. Yet they failed to adopt the measure.
In a joint letter to the EU high representative on foreign policy Kaja Kallas, the foreign ministers of the three countries pointed to concrete breaches of Article 2 of the agreement.
The letter cited a recently passed Israeli law imposing the death penalty on Palestinians convicted in military courts, the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, and settler violence in the West Bank carried out with reported impunity. The letter also pointed to “recurrent attacks against religious freedom of Muslims and Christians that challenge the status-quo of the Holy Land.” And on Lebanon, the foreign ministers noted that Israeli military operations there were carried out with “absolute disregard of international law and international humanitarian law.”
The countries’ representatives also reminded Kallas that an earlier review of Israeli compliance conducted by the European External Action Service by June 2025 clearly established that Israel was in breach of its obligations under the agreement with the EU, and that the situation “has only deteriorated” since the review was conducted.
The evidence of systematic violations in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon is not ambiguous.
By any measure, the next logical step should have been a suspension of the agreement.
But that’s not what happened. Instead, Germany and Italy blocked any suspension, with Germany’s foreign minister Johann Wadephul calling the proposal “inappropriate” and insisting on more “critical, constructive dialogue” with Israel. His Italian counterpart, Antonio Tajani, said the idea of suspension has been shelved.
The argument used to justify yet more inaction against Israel’s serial war crimes was that it is better to exhaust dialogue and to pressure Israel from within the framework rather than to blow it up. But this argument collapses under its own weight, Mamedov notes:
Article 2 is not a preamble aspiration — it is a binding condition. Once the EU review found Israel to be in breach, following the agreement means enforcing its terms, not indefinitely ignoring them.
And if anything, it has now become abundantly clear that, absent real pressure, Israel, under Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, will not change its behavior…
The message the EU is sending is unmistakable: some violations are intolerable; others are merely unfortunate. The more Israel escalates — in Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, Iran — the more the EU’s deference to Tel Aviv underscores the deeply unhealthy nature of this relationship.
UN Special Rapporteur to Palestine Francesca Albanese puts in in starker terms: markets are more important than lives. This brings to mind Lambert’s classic two rules of neoliberalism: Rule #1: Because markets. Rule #2: Go die!
– Shame Within Borders –
Maintaining trade in times of genocide means valuing goods over humans. Markets over life.
This is not policy: it is a system. A clash of values.
It is either equality, freedom, solidarity. Or it is their contrary.
Please choose.
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) April 22, 2026
The Spanish foreign minister Jose Manuel Albares cautioned that the “EU risks losing credibility if it fails to apply the same principles to Israel’s perpetual war in the Middle East as it does to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine”.
For the record, Russia last week was subject to its 20th round of EU sanctions. By contrast, the EU has is still yet impose sanctions on Israeli settlements in the region, which it has been promising to do for years. Also, as reader DJG Reality Star points out in the comments below, Albares’ reference to “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine” leaves out some key historic elements:
NATO expansion? Minsk I, Minsk II? The OCSE reports documenting the Kiev government’s blind eye toward right-wing militias sent into the Donbass to engage in torture, murder, and confiscation of churches? Victoria and cookies and “Fuck the EU”?
Nonetheless, the EU’s embarrassingly underqualified chief diplomat, Kaja Kallas, would still beg to differ with Albares on the EU’s loss of credibility over Israel. Last week, she claimed that the EU had been the strongest supporter of the Palestinian people in the world — just a day before EU foreign ministers once again declined to hold Israel accountable for its genocidal violence against the Palestinian people.
The unindicted war criminal Kaja Kallas said Europe has been the strongest supporter of the Palestinian people “anywhere in the world.” The same Europe that armed, funded & supported Israel as it slaughtered hundreds of Palestinians a day for 2years. the chutzpah
— Zachary Foster (@_ZachFoster) April 20, 2026
The day after that, Kallas’ disconnect with reality seemingly grew even larger as she claimed that the EU’s international credibility was actually rising under her expert stewardship:
EU Foreign Affairs Chief Kaja Kallas completely detaches from reality. She bizarrely claims the bloc’s credibility is rising, while Germany and Italy actively block the suspension of Israel’s trade deal despite a petition from over a million European citizens. pic.twitter.com/0BnIZjBYFw
— Furkan Gözükara (@FurkanGozukara) April 22, 2026
In the past week, Kallas’ boss, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, has further burnished the EU’s international credibility by warning about the need to protect Europe from the influence not just of Russia and China but also NATO partner Türkiye — coincidentally, just weeks after former Israeli premier Naftali Bennett, who is hotly tipped to replace Netanyahu, described Türkiye as the “next Iran”.
Not only do VdL and Kallas seem intent on destroying the bloc’s relations with all three of the world’s superpowers, at the same time (see below), but they also seem to continue to be getting many of their prompts from Tel Aviv:
Realpolitik 101: Make sure to befriend the enemy of your enemy to not allow them to destroy you at the same time.
EU: Why not just simultaneously antagonize and go against the whole Triumvirate of great power politics (US, China, Russia) because nobody gives me cookies anymore.
— Velina Tchakarova (@vtchakarova) April 27, 2026
As VdL warns about the malign influence of China, Russia and Türkiye on Europe, not a word has been said about Israeli’s undue influence — despite a documented attempt just weeks ago by Israeli operatives to meddle in Slovenian elections. A new exposé by the Electronic Infitada’s David Cronin reveals that Israeli influence over EU policy is, if anything, greater than feared:
A document I obtained through a freedom of information request illustrates that more than two years after the Gaza genocide began, the Israel lobby is still writing the script which key Brussels officials follow.
Hélène Le Gal, head of the Middle East division in the EU’s diplomatic service, appears particularly willing to have the script written for her.
The document shows that Le Gal has agreed to be a host of a “strategic dialogue” organized jointly by the diplomatic service and the pro-Israel group called the European Leadership Network (Elnet). Scheduled for 12-13 May, the event will feature “30 high-level policy and opinion makers – 15 from the EU and 15 from Israel,” says the invitation for the event
The discussions at the May event will be “entirely” off-the-record, the invitation says. As usual, the public must be kept in the dark about matters of demonstrable public interest…
Cronin closes off with the observation that while some of the most senior figures in the Brussels bureaucracy have no red lines, they do have red carpets, which they unfurl whenever Israel’s advocates ask them to do so.
Helping Israel commit the worst of war crimes doesn’t stop the EU from trying to maintaining the moral high ground, however, by: a) intensifying its public criticism of Israel’s excesses, while b) shining a massive spotlight on the tiny little material support it continues to provide to Palestine’s brutalised land and peoples. As Francesca Albanese points out below, such posturing is “simply unsufferable”.
On the third year of genocide, as Gaza gets hit by a plague of rats/fleas, EU bureaucratese and charity posturing are simply unsufferable.
Uphold the Law.
Stop arming & trading with Israel.
Ensure ICC arrest warrants are enforced.
Defend the defenders.
Only then, talk charity.
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) April 27, 2026
