The EU's 27 foreign ministers are expected to discuss the suspension of ties with Israel at a meeting on Tuesday, after the country's war on Lebanon sparked outrage.
The foreign ministers of Spain, Ireland and Slovenia have asked again for the topic to be on the meeting's agenda, as tensions rise between several European states and Israel.
Sweden and France have also for the first time pushed for the European Commission, which oversees EU trade matters, to ban imports from Israeli settlements. In a letter seen by The National, they described settler violence against Palestinians as increasing at a "record pace".
A full suspension of the EU-Israel association agreement is unlikely to be adopted, Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot said on arrival at the meeting in Luxembourg. It would require unanimous backing from all 27 EU states. Germany is among the nations that have shown no signs of changing their pro-Israel position.
But the EU must signal that Israel's conduct of the war in Lebanon was unacceptable to Europe, Mr Prevot added. "Belgium has been calling for at least a partial suspension of the association agreement between Israel and the European Union," he said. "We must be able to act in order to influence the debate."
A partial suspension requires a qualified majority vote – 55 per cent of states and 65 per cent of the total EU population. Measures put on the table by the European Commission in September include suspending preferential tariffs between the bloc and Israel. As the EU is Israel's biggest market, this would cost the Israeli economy an estimated €227 million ($267 million).
EU member states might also choose to make no decision at all, as divisions persist. On Monday, the EU's foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas said it was too early to know how talks would go. "First, I think it should be assessed whether it's possible to move with those [measures] if the member states have the wish to do so to put pressure on Israel," she said.
This is not the first time a minority of states led by Spain requested the suspension of the EU-Israel association agreement. The move was also put forward in early 2024, months into the Gaza war.
The agreement became controversial shortly after it was adopted in 2000. Two years later, amid the second Intifada, the European Parliament backed for a resolution calling on the European Council and European Commission to consider suspending it.
Settlement products
On Tuesday, focus will fall on Italy. A qualified majority could be reached with Italian support and Rome recently hardened its position against Israel by suspending the renewal of a defence agreement. This came after Rome summoned Israel's ambassador after Israeli troops fired warning shots at Italian peacekeepers in southern Lebanon.
Whatever ministers decide, European pressure is increasing on Israel. In an internal paper sent on Sunday and seen by The National, France and Sweden asked the European Commission to introduce "measures such as tariffs on settlement products and import restrictions through export licences".
"We believe that the EU urgently needs to increase pressure on Israel to halt its settlement policy and practices," the letter added. It also referred to the so-called E1 project that would isolate East Jerusalem from the rest of the occupied West Bank.
France and Sweden concluded the letter by saying that an import ban on settlement products should be considered owing to the "ever and fast deteriorating situation". The countries highlighted that they supported the move despite referring to the European Commission's position stating "the EU is not obliged" to do so.
That position, which has not been made public, was communicated by the European Commission in response to a letter signed by Belgium and other states in June 2025, asking for clarity on he obligations of states following an advisory opinion on Israel from the International Court of Justice, the letter said.
This appears to signal a shift in position from France's earlier legal interpretation of the text. The Foreign Ministry told The National in February that it believed the EU's policy of differentiation of settlement imports from imports of products made in Israel was enough to abide by the ICJ's advisory opinion.
"The implementation of international law, as described in the ICJ advisory opinion, is in accordance with European treaties – this is precisely the meaning of the policy of differentiation applied at the European level and whose strict and rigorous implementation France supports," the ministry said at the time.
Article 278 of the advisory opinion states that states should "abstain from entering into economic or trade dealings with Israel concerning the Occupied Palestinian Territory or parts thereof which may entrench its unlawful presence in the territory".
Israeli-Polish spat
The debate on the EU-Israel agreement had been shelved in October after a US-brokered ceasefire in Gaza. But it has resurfaced with Israel's war on Lebanon, which has killed more than 2,200 Lebanese, health authorities said.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz last week issued separate, albeit less sharp, criticism of Israel's plans to annex the occupied West Bank. That received a hostile response from far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
"The days when Germans dictated to Jews where they were permitted or forbidden to live are over and shall not return. You will not force us into ghettos again, certainly not in our own land," Mr Smotrich said on X.
Israel's ambassador to Germany later appeared to attempt to smooth things over, telling an Israeli broadcaster that Mr Smotrich was instrumentalising the Holocaust.
