EU’s 27 countries struggle to find a united voice on Gaza

For the protesters waving Palestinian flags outside EU buildings in Brussels, it was the moment that everything might change.

An EU report presented to foreign ministers had found there were indications Israel had breached human rights obligations under the EU-Israel Association Agreement, ahead of Thursday’s European Union leaders’ summit.

The European Union is Israel’s biggest trading partner, and the protesters were demanding that the EU suspend its 25-year-old trade accord over Israel’s actions in Gaza.

But their hopes that EU leaders would agree to suspend the agreement with Israel were soon dashed, because despite the report deep divisions remain over the war in Gaza.

The protesters have been backed by more than 100 NGOs and charities.

In 20 months of Israeli military operations more than 55,000 Gazans have been killed, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Another 1.9 million people have been displaced.

Israel also imposed a total blockade on humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza at the start of March, which it partially eased after 11 weeks following pressure from US allies and warnings from global experts that half a million people were facing starvation.

Since then, the UN says more than 400 Palestinians are reported to have been killed by Israeli gunfire or shelling while trying to reach food distribution centres run by a US and Israeli-backed organisation. Another 90 have also reportedly been killed by Israeli forces while attempting to approach convoys of the UN and other aid groups.

“Every red line has been crossed in Gaza” Agnes Bertrand-Sanz from Oxfam told the BBC.

“Every rule has been breached. It really is high time that the European Union acts.”

As the report was made public, it fell to foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas to explain what the European Union would do next.

The EU’s first goal would be to “change the situation” on the ground in Gaza, she said. If that did not happen, “further measures” would be discussed next month on how to suspend the association agreement.

“We will contact Israel to, you know, present our finding,” she stumbled in an uncharacteristically faltering manner. “Because that is the focus of the member states, to really, you know… be very, very sure about the feelings that we have here.”

NGOs said the EU had missed an opportunity to take action and that the response was feeble.

The Israeli foreign ministry called the review “a complete moral and methodological failure.”

For some of the EU’s critics, the episode was a vivid example of how the EU can talk a good game about being the biggest global humanitarian aid donor to Gaza, but badly struggles to present any coherent or powerful voice to match it.

As the world’s biggest market of 450 million people, the EU carries great economic weight but it is not translating into political clout.

“The fact that European countries and the UK are not doing more to put pressure on Israel and to enforce international humanitarian law, it makes it very difficult for these countries to be credible,” said Olivier De Schutter, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on human rights.

“War crimes are being committed at a very large scale In Gaza, there is debate about whether this amounts to genocide, but even if there’s no genocide there is a duty to act.”

De Schutter fears the EU’s soft power is being lost and its inaction makes it much harder for it to persuade to countries in Africa, Asia in Latin America to back Europe on condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine, for example.

Israel maintains it acts within international law and that its mission is to destroy Hamas and bring home the remaining hostages taken when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023. About 1,200 people were killed in the attack, which triggered Israel’s offensive on Gaza.

As a union of 27 countries, the domestic political reality in Europe makes it unlikely that EU leaders will back the views of the majority of member states on Gaza.

Eleven EU countries have recognised Palestine as a state, and among them Ireland, Spain, Belgium, Slovenia and Sweden had pushed for the European Union’s agreement with Israel to be suspended.

At the heart of the EU’s foreign policy decision-making in Brussels is the fact that decisions have to be unanimous, and so just one dissenting voice can block the EU from taking action.

In this case Germany, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic are all opposed.

Austria hopes the EU’s review will spark action, but not necessarily a suspension of the treaty with Israel.

“Everything I’ve heard in this regard will not help the people in Gaza,” said Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger. “What it would however cause is a deterioration, if not a complete breakdown of the dialogue we currently have with Israel.”

Germany’s position on Israel has often been shaped by its role in the Holocaust and World War Two.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz says the “current level of attacks on Gaza can no longer be justified by the fight against Hamas”, but he has refused to consider suspending or terminating the agreement.

Slovakia and Hungary are considered more closely aligned politically to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu than many other EU countries.

Among the key players advocating tougher measures against Netanyahu’s government is Ireland.

Its foreign affairs minister, Simon Harris, condemned the EU’s handling of the review.

“Our response in relation to Gaza has been much too slow and far too many people have been left to die as genocide has been carried out,” he said.

Israel rejects the charge of genocide and when it closed its embassy in Dublin last December it accused Ireland of antisemitism.

Europe has recently found itself sidelined by Washington on big global issues, notably Ukraine and Iran – with President Donald Trump in favour of direct talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.

The US may not be in listening mood, but on Gaza the EU has struggled to muster a unified voice on Gaza, let alone make it heard.

Additional reporting by Bruno Boelpaep, Senior Europe Producer.