The Brief – Is the EU ready to break taboos to restrain Israel?

With horrifying images coming out of Gaza, Europeans have started looking for the right tools to exert pressure on Israel, but they might not be able to bridge their fundamental internal differences.

It is not a secret that Europe has no coherent voice or unified foreign policy when it comes to Gaza. Few foreign policy issues are as divisive as Palestine and Israel.

In recent months, EU leaders were very forceful in condemning the brutality of Hamas’s 7 October massacre and agreeing that a two-state solution is the only way to bring peace in the Middle East in the long term.

But member states’ positions have been all over the place when it came to applying the same criticism to Israel’s offensive in Gaza, presenting 27 different nuances across the condemnation spectrum.

Eight months into the war, Israel keeps pushing ahead with military action in southern Gaza despite a ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordering Tel Aviv to halt it and International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutors looking into war crimes and crimes against humanity by both Israeli and Hamas leaders.

The bar for the EU to act decisively is very low. In fact, it does not have too many options to exert pressure on Israel, but it does have some.

On Monday (27 May) foreign ministers engaged in a “significant” discussion on sanctioning Israel, Irish Foreign Minister Micheál Martin told reporters before leaving Brussels.

Such a step might be a rather distant prospect, especially with the scattered national positions, but also because imposing sanctions is usually the ultimate – and not the primary – choice of action.

But first signs of a shift may already be there: Foreign ministers are seriously engaging in talks with Arab counterparts over future peace talks, several European countries are ready to recognise Palestinian statehood, and the EU may reactivate the EU’s Border Assistance Mission (EUBAM) Rafah to monitor humanitarian aid flows into the border crossing between Gaza and Egypt.

The EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell, who hasn’t minced his words on Gaza for a while now, also took a direct swipe at Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister Netanyahu, apparently hinting at what direction Europeans’ argumentation might go in the next few weeks.

Most radically, perhaps, the decision to convene a meeting under the EU-Israeli Association Council – and summon Netanyahu’s top diplomat to Brussels to raise concerns over Israel’s compliance with human rights – could be the best pressure element the EU has, and might be even a sign that they have read the room.

The EU side hopes to organise it as soon as possible, ideally even before the EU’s 27-28 June summit, where leaders could discuss its outcome and possible follow-up, according to EU officials.

However, such a meeting would need to be called in agreement with the Israeli side, including on the date and location. For now, a quick decision seems unlikely.

“What do we do for example, if the Israeli side, says ‘Yes, sure, let’s have the meeting, we invite you to Jerusalem’. What do we do then?” one EU official said.

Should the talks take place any time soon, any actual consequences Europeans could draw would require unanimity, which could be hard to come by with Israel’s staunch supporters – Hungary, Czechia and others – reluctant about concrete measures.

For now, it remains a pressure instrument at best. But it goes together with the overall change of tone.

The Roundup

EU member states said on Wednesday they are hopeful to agree on the negotiation frameworks for Ukraine and Moldova in the first week of June, though some objections from Hungary remain.

Less than two months before NATO’s 75th-anniversary summit in Washington, the top job race nomination continues amid political bargaining, with outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte the strongest contender by far.

German farmers’ rallies marked the beginning of European demonstrations, but while they have largely ebbed away, they remain unsatisfied with how the national government works.

A new compromise text of the draft law on online child sexual abuse material, seen by Euractiv, excludes audio communications from the scope and tries to strike a new balance between encryption and fighting CSAM.

EU energy ministers are set to meet for the final time this term on 30 May, to discuss Russian energy and the Green Deal, but many countries are tabling ‘Any Other Business’ points, intending to influence the EU’s post-election agenda.

The 4G telecoms patents owner Sun Patents Trust has “summoned” Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi to a Paris court, according to a Wednesday press release, and may be looking for witness testimony from the European telecommunications standardisation body.

Investigators raided the home and offices of an EU parliamentary staffer on Wednesday, as Belgium probes claims that Russia paid far-right lawmakers — including Germany’s embattled Maximilian Krah — to spread Kremlin propaganda.

Germany’s cabinet approved on Wednesday two draft bills to accelerate the integration of hydrogen and carbon capture respectively, into the country’s energy and industrial systems.

The European Commission’s Directorate General of Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CNECT) is reorganising its internal structure to accommodate for the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Office, officials said on Wednesday.

Belarus has taken extraordinary steps to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people this year as it finds itself excluded from the democratic world and is taking lessons from its much larger Russian neighbour.

With the EU set for a new five-year term, the bloc’s powerhouses France and Germany insist that their economic priorities – featuring a heftier EU budget and less regulated industries – be considered first and foremost.

Look out for…

• Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson meets with Portugal’s Environment and Energy Minister Maria da Graça Carvalho; and with Csaba Lantos, Hungary’s minister of energy, on Thursday.
• Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski in Astana, Kazakhstan, on Thursday.
• EU Green Week Brussels Conference Wednesday-Thursday.
• Foreign Affairs Council (Trade) on Thursday.
• Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council (Energy) on Thursday.

Views are the author’s

[Edited by René Moerland/Zoran Radosavljevic]