{"id":74005,"date":"2026-04-20T05:44:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T05:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/74005\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T05:44:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T05:44:11","slug":"who-will-side-with-israel-when-eu-foreign-ministers-talk-sanctions-euobserver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/74005\/","title":{"rendered":"Who will side with Israel when EU foreign ministers talk sanctions? \u2013 EUobserver"},"content":{"rendered":"

At least five EU foreign ministers will call for Israel sanctions this week, citing the prospect of what aid groups have called \u201capartheid hangings\u201d<\/a> as a prominent reason for the move.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Belgian minister also aims to speak out and Dutch MPs have tasked their minister to do so.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, and Sweden are likely to support them, based on past positions.<\/p>\n

The French and Italian ministers<\/a> are set to criticise Israel.<\/p>\n

A French foreign ministry official said it \u201ccannot exclude\u201d future EU sanctions, while an Italian one said its ministry was giving them \u201cserious\u201d thought in the run-up to Luxembourg.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s more than half the EU27-table on a head count, in terms what will dominate Tuesday\u2019s debate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Germany, whose centre-right still backs Israel, might say the Lebanon ceasefire means sanctions should stay \u201con the table\u201d \u2013 the joint EU line since September 2025. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The Baltic states, Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania\u2019s ministers tend to abstain on Israel to focus on Russia. <\/p>\n

Cyprus and Greece also speak softly on the Middle East, due to geopolitical complexities in the Eastern Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

But anyway, the pro-Israeli Hungarian foreign minister P\u00e9ter Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3 isn\u2019t going to Luxembourg<\/a> after his party lost elections.<\/p>\n

And that all leaves the Czech minister, Petr Macinka, as Israel\u2019s only hardline defender in Tuesday\u2019s EU Council chamber.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There will never be an EU qualified majority vote (QMV) in favour of suspending trade perks in the EU-Israel association agreement, worth some \u20ac1bn\/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. \u00a0<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s interesting the Irish, Slovenian, and Spanish ministers, as well as the Dutch parliament resolution, cited Israel\u2019s Palestinian-only death penalty as a leading motive for EU action.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hangings might seem like a symbolic issue, compared to Israel\u2019s UN-expert dubbed \u201cgenocide\u201d in Gaza, de facto West Bank annexation, and south Lebanon occupation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But in the Greek paradox of Zeno\u2019s Heap, the question is: How many pebbles make a heap?<\/p>\n

The head count of views in the Luxembourg talks looks like there\u2019s already an EU moral majority.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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).\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, back in Luxembourg, the Slovak foreign minister, Juraj Blan\u00e1r, will find himself even more isolated on Russia<\/a> than Macinka will on Israel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With Hungary\u2019s pro-Russian Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3 absent, it will be the EU25 against Slovakia\u2019s extant veto on the 20th round of Russia sanctions.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf 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\u2019s] operation,\u201d Blan\u00e1r told parliament in Bratislava last Thursday, in his latest comment on the issue. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Hungary\u2019s veto might de jure hang around for a week or so, until a new government takes over in Budapest.<\/p>\n

But Blan\u00e1r\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Andrew Rettman, foreign affairs editor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At least five EU foreign ministers will call for Israel sanctions this week, citing the prospect of what…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74006,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[2756,10832,2765,19669,37,19667,2763,10830,19668,2764,10831],"class_list":{"0":"post-74005","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-typedefinedterm","9":"tag-identifier4308","10":"tag-identifier4328","11":"tag-identifier4599","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-nameeuobserver-voice","14":"tag-nameisrael","15":"tag-namerussia","16":"tag-termcodeeuobserver-voice","17":"tag-termcodeisrael","18":"tag-termcoderussia"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116435449446818002","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}