The European Commission has published an EU optional paper to reimpose EU Israeli trade obligations in response to Israeli attacks on Gaza.
In an interview with Euronows, Kaja Kallas, the EU Foreign Ministry’s High Representative, confirmed his strategy to suspend trade-related provisions within the Israeli-EU Association agreement.
The EU is Israel’s largest trading partner. “We’ve traded 42.6 billion euros with Israel in 2024. So that’s a fair amount. And when it comes to priority treatments, 37% of that trade really has priority treatments.
However, it is up to EU member states to decide whether the measure will pass, and so far, some member states have continually blocked efforts to sanction Israel due to voting requirements.
Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria have decisively prevented the EU from dealing with Israel’s violations of international law, including violations of Article 2 of the EU-US Association Agreement.
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