EU foreign ministers will discuss Israel trade sanctions next week, while waiting for Hungary’s new foreign policy to take shape.

Belgium, Ireland, Malta, Slovenia, and Spain had advocated the move in past meetings. 

And “I expect indeed my minister to bring that up during the discussions, and not only them”, said an EU diplomat from the group.

“Some member states will likely raise the previous proposals, which have remained on the table,” said a second EU diplomat.

They are to bring them up during wider Middle East talks by EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg next Tuesday (21 April), covering also the Iran war. 

And the Italian parliament was briefed on the potential EU measures in Rome on Wednesday (15 April), where a senior foreign ministry official, Maria Tripodi, said the government would take a “serious and balanced position” on the issue at next week’s meeting. 

“I expect the EU foreign service is having discussions with member states” to test appetite for the move, a third EU diplomat said.

The EU foreign service declined to confirm this. 

The trade sanctions would entail suspending an EU-Israel association agreement by a qualified majority vote (QMV) in the EU Council, costing Israel some €1bn a year in lost trade perks. 

This would require two Israeli allies, Germany and Italy, to change their mind. 

But Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni imposed defence sanctions on Israel on Tuesday to distance herself from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after he became toxic to Italian centre-right voters. 

Italy also smashed its national ‘minimum threshold’ in an EU citizens’ petition with over 1 million backers filed this week in Brussels, in a sign of the wider public mood. 

And 49 former Italian ambassadors signed a public letter calling for EU sanctions on Israel, also on Wednesday. 

Germany did not reach its EU-petition ‘threshold’ and there is resistance to EU sanctions also among German conservative EU officials, such as the European Commission’s co-ordinator for the fight against antisemitism, Katerina von Schnurbein.  

But 18 former German ambassadors and senior ex-EU officials also signed the public letter, together with dozens of ex-ambassadors from Belgium and Sweden, out of 350 signatories in total.  

And Israel’s extremist finance minister Bezalel Smotrich made himself toxic in Germany on Monday, with a Holocaust-slur on X against German centre-right chancellor Friedrich Merz. 

The full EU sanctions package first proposed by the EU Commission last September at the height of Gaza hostilities also included: suspending Israel from the Horizon science programme (decided by QMV), blacklisting Smotrich and extremist Israeli security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (decided by EU unanimity), and blacklisting more extremist West Bank settlers (unanimity). 

Magyar veto?

Hungary had vetoed the blacklistings under its outgoing pro-Netanyahu prime minister Viktor Orbán. 

And the next prime minister, centre-right politician Péter Magyar, has not made clear his Israel foreign policy since his landslide election win last Sunday. 

His Tisza party’s press team did not reply to EUobserver’s questions on Israel for his incoming foreign minister, Anita Orbán, on Wednesday. 

But Magyar has committed to overturning one pro-Israel Orbán policy – blocking Hungary’s exit from the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Magyar will take power in early May, while Hungary had been slated to formally exit the ICC on 2 June, after Orbán set wheels in motion to shield Netanyahu from a war-crimes warrant. 

Magyar also campaigned on return to the rule of law in Hungary. 

And both the EU citizens’ petition and ex-EU ambassadors’ letter cited chapter and verse of the EU-Israel association agreement’s Article 2 human-rights clause.