{"id":28486,"date":"2026-07-13T10:50:40","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T10:50:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/28486\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T10:50:40","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T10:50:40","slug":"belgium-slams-eu-commission-for-inaction-against-illegal-israeli-settlements-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/28486\/","title":{"rendered":"Belgium slams EU Commission for inaction against illegal Israeli settlements \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThe European Commission has finally proposed some options over two pages,\u201d Pr\u00e9vot told journalists on his way into the Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Brussels. \u201cSo this is the feeling they have thrown out a bone to chew on rather than any real will to go forward.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Pr\u00e9vot went on to say that the measures were \u201clargely insufficient compared to the need to be a credible actor on the geopolitical level in the Israeli-Palestinian situation \u2014 which, I regret to say, the European Union has not been for some time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/israel-ursula-von-der-leyen-showdown-illegal-settlements\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">push to clamp down on Israel\u2019s illegal settlements<\/a> was due to loom large at the gathering of foreign ministers, with a group of countries \u2014 including Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Ireland \u2014 seeking to form a majority to force the Commission to table a formal proposal that can be put to a vote.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking to journalists on her way into the meeting, chief EU diplomat Kaja Kallas said the situation with illegal settlements needs to be addressed and that she sided with the European Council\u2019s legal service against the Commission on whether tariffs on the settlements are trade measures or sanctions. The difference is that the former requires only a qualified majority of states to pass, while the latter requires unanimity.<\/p>\n<p>Ministers from the Netherlands and Spain also called for an EU-wide halt to trade with the settlements, pointing out that their own countries had already taken bilateral measures.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSpain has banned these imports bilaterally. The European Union needs to do it too,\u201d said Spanish Foreign Minister Jos\u00e9 Manuel Albares Bueno.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe European Commission has finally proposed some options over two pages,\u201d Pr\u00e9vot told journalists on his way into&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[2935,7,347,2217,327,328,3165,15755,349,487,941,473,116,258,180,181,300],"class_list":["post-28486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-belgium","tag-banks","tag-belgium","tag-foreign-policy","tag-gaza","tag-imports","tag-ireland","tag-israel","tag-israeli-palestinian-conflict","tag-kaja-kallas","tag-middle-east","tag-sanctions","tag-services","tag-spain","tag-tariffs","tag-the-netherlands","tag-trade","tag-ursula-von-der-leyen"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/116912286943776995","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}