By Alberto Alemanno

 

PARIS/BRUSSELS, 15 June. - (ANA) - You often see them in the supermarket: oranges, grapefruits, dates, wine and SodaStream that come from illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories.

 

Since at least the early 1990s, the European Union has allowed these products on its market without any restrictions – even as international courts have repeatedly ruled the settlements illegal.

 

Now, upon the demand of countries such as Ireland, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Slovenia, a proposal to ban settlement products from the European market is being discussed behind the walls of the Berlyamont and could soon be on the table of EU foreign ministers.

 

Whether it is adopted largely depends on whether it will be voted under unanimity rule – required if considered expression of EU Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), or qualified majority vote – foreseen when  part of EU trade policy.

 

Unanimity has paralysed EU action too many times. This one is possible to avoid.

 

Passing measures under the foreign policy framework was deliberately designed to be difficult. It is reserved for geopolitical decisions of the highest order, those that affect the security and strategic position of the Union as a whole.

 

The EU’s sweeping sanctions against Russia following the invasion of Ukraine are the clearest example as are the asset freezes imposed on Belarusian officials after the 2020 electoral fraud and violent repression.

 

Each of them involved genuine questions of war, authoritarian aggression, and European security.

 

The proposal to ban goods from Israeli settlements is qualitatively different. It does not seek to punish a state or alter a geopolitical relationship. Its sole aim is to ensure that EU commerce does not infringe international law, a legal obligation the International Court of Justice (ICJ) spelled out with unusual clarity in its 2024 opinion.

 

Trade measures that pursue objectives like respecting labour rights or human rights – fall squarely within EU trade law, as the European Court of Justice has consistently held.

 

The legal basis for this approach is not novel.

 

A growing body of EU legislation already embeds human rights and international law compliance within trade policy.

 

 

 

 

The most recent precedent is instructive: the EU restricted Russian energy imports by a qualified majority under an internal market and trade legal basis, over the explicit objections of Hungary and Slovakia.

 

If Budapest and Bratislava could not veto energy policy by invoking foreign policy grounds, others – such as the German or the Italian governments – cannot do so for West Bank trade either.

 

The argument for unanimity is not frivolous: any trade restriction with geopolitical consequences could theoretically trigger this voting modality. But that logic would swallow trade policy as a whole, and with it, the EU’s capacity to act as a global power with values.

 

An import ban on settlement goods – valued at approximately €230m annually by Israel’s own government, less than 0.002 percent of EU GDP – does not approach the threshold reserved for decisions affecting national sovereignty, military commitments, or security.

 

The selective application of voting rules makes the political motivation even harder to ignore. 

 

The EU has already imposed trade restrictions on goods from other contested territories – Moroccan phosphates from Western Sahara, products from northern Cyprus – using qualified majority.

 

If settlement goods require unanimity but Moroccan phosphates from Western Sahara and northern Cyprus don’t, the process is being chosen selectively. 

 

Europe’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, has already signaled that the ban should require only a qualified majority. The pressure to route it through unanimity comes, perversely, in part from states that claim to support the ban.

 

 

 

 

Countries like Germany and Italy invoke unanimity not out of legal concerns but rather as a political convenience. 

 

As consensus is nearly impossible to reach, they can express support for the ban while bearing no responsibility if it fails. Unanimity offers the ideal façade for symbolic, rhetorical support and zero accountability.

 

The call for unanimity is not a legal requirement, but a political alibi.

 

When this vote comes, every government’s position will be on record. Those who invoke unanimity while claiming to support the ban should be named for what they are: states that prefer the comfort of symbolic solidarity over the discomfort of acting responsibly.

 

Europe is one qualified majority vote away from bringing 30 years of market complicity to an end. The only question is whether its governments have the honesty to take it.   - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/15 June 2026 - - -