Who will side with Israel when EU foreign ministers talk sanctions?
· EUobserverEU foreign ministers met with Israeli counterpart Gideon Sa’ar in Brussels on 24 February 2025 (Source: EU Council)
Who will side with Israel when EU foreign ministers talk sanctions?
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By Andrew Rettman,
At least five EU foreign ministers will call for Israel sanctions this week, citing the prospect of what aid groups have called “apartheid hangings” as a prominent reason for the move.
The Irish, Slovenian, and Spanish ministers will lead the way when EU foreign ministers meet in Luxembourg on Tuesday (21 April), they declared in a letter on Friday.
The Belgian minister also aims to speak out and Dutch MPs have tasked their minister to do so.
Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, and Sweden are likely to support them, based on past positions.
The French and Italian ministers are set to criticise Israel.
A French foreign ministry official said it “cannot exclude” future EU sanctions, while an Italian one said its ministry was giving them “serious” thought in the run-up to Luxembourg.
That’s more than half the EU27-table on a head count, in terms what will dominate Tuesday’s debate.
Germany, whose centre-right still backs Israel, might say the Lebanon ceasefire means sanctions should stay “on the table” – the joint EU line since September 2025.
The Baltic states, Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania’s ministers tend to abstain on Israel to focus on Russia.
Cyprus and Greece also speak softly on the Middle East, due to geopolitical complexities in the Eastern Mediterranean.
But anyway, the pro-Israeli Hungarian foreign minister Péter Szijjártó isn’t going to Luxembourg after his party lost elections.
And that all leaves the Czech minister, Petr Macinka, as Israel’s only hardline defender in Tuesday’s EU Council chamber.
There will never be an EU qualified majority vote (QMV) in favour of suspending trade perks in the EU-Israel association agreement, worth some €1bn/year, unless Germany and Italy turn against Israel, in what would mark a historic watershed in relations with the Jewish state since World War 2.
But it’s interesting the Irish, Slovenian, and Spanish ministers, as well as the Dutch parliament resolution, cited Israel’s Palestinian-only death penalty as a leading motive for EU action.
Hangings might seem like a symbolic issue, compared to Israel’s UN-expert dubbed “genocide” in Gaza, de facto West Bank annexation, and south Lebanon occupation.
But in the Greek paradox of Zeno’s Heap, the question is: How many pebbles make a heap?
The head count of views in the Luxembourg talks looks like there’s already an EU moral majority.
And when symbols, such as spectres of future Arab hangings, gain such prominence in international affairs, it might mean the EU is just one more pebble away, one more noose lapel-pin worn by an Israeli MK, or Holocaust-slur on X by an Israeli minister, let alone one more Lebanon massacre, from a political heap (QMV).
If the EU ever moved on Israeli trade, its big-boulder item, this would also clear the path for an avalanche of smaller EU measures, for example on Israel science grants and visa-bans on Israeli settler extremists.
Meanwhile, back in Luxembourg, the Slovak foreign minister, Juraj Blanár, will find himself even more isolated on Russia than Macinka will on Israel.
With Hungary’s pro-Russian Szijjártó absent, it will be the EU25 against Slovakia’s extant veto on the 20th round of Russia sanctions.
“If the Druzhba oil pipeline [from Russia to Slovakia] is not put back into operation and the approval of the 20th sanctions package is on the table, we will not approve it, as we have no other instruments to compel Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, together with the European Commission, to restore the [pipeline’s] operation,” Blanár told parliament in Bratislava last Thursday, in his latest comment on the issue.
Hungary’s veto might de jure hang around for a week or so, until a new government takes over in Budapest.
But Blanár’s Druzhba remarks look to me like a Russia off-ramp already, given that both Zelensky and the commission had earlier said the pipeline will be operational by May.
Andrew Rettman, foreign affairs editor
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EU foreign ministers met with Israeli counterpart Gideon Sa’ar in Brussels on 24 February 2025 (Source: EU Council)
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Andrew Rettman is EUobserver’s foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.