The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, has called for a suspension of free trade with Israel, as she spoke of Europe’s “painful” inability to respond to the war on Gaza and ensuing humanitarian disaster.
In her most extended condemnation yet of the Israeli government, von der Leyen criticised plans for illegal settlements that would split the occupied West Bank in half, as well as incitement of violence by extremist Israeli ministers, as a “clear attempt to undermine the two-state solution”.
She made the remarks during her annual “state of the union” speech to the European parliament in Strasbourg, in which she depicted a turbulent world where battle lines “are being drawn” and “dependencies are ruthlessly weaponised”.
She did not refer to Israel’s unprecedented strikes on Qatar, but those events were also in her mind as she spoke of the “endless spiral of events” in an “unforgiving” world.
In response to Russia’s overnight violations of Polish airspace, she said Europe “stands in full solidarity with Poland”, a line prompting MEPs to their feet applauding in support. Von der Leyen continued, calling for Europe to exert more pressure on the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to come to the negotiating table.
It was a pugnacious speech after a bruising summer when von der Leyen received heavy criticism for the EU’s approach to the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, as well as her much-criticised trade deal with Donald Trump. Meanwhile, forest fires intensified by the climate crisis consumed European land equivalent to one-third of the size of Belgium.
Describing Europe’s inability to agree on a response to Gaza as painful, von der Leyen said the EU executive would freeze its bilateral support for Israel, apart from funds for civil society groups and the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial centre. The commission would also table proposals to suspend the trade parts of the EU-Israel association agreement and draft sanctions against Israeli extremist ministers and violent settlers in the West Bank, she said.
It remains unclear whether the divided EU will find the majority to suspend preferential trade, as a less ambitious measure to freeze Israel’s participation in the EU’s research programme remains blocked. The commission previously considered sanctions against two far-right Israeli ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, for their incendiary statements against people in Gaza, but stopped short of tabling the proposal, fearing it would not get the unanimity required.
The EU is Israel’s biggest trading partner with an annual exchange of goods and services worth €68bn (£59bn). Critics of the EU’s approach have long called for the bloc to use its economic leverage: while 32% of Israel’s global goods trade is with the EU, the Middle Eastern country accounts for only 0.8% of EU goods trade. The EU-Israel association agreement, signed in 2000, created a free-trade area and promoted cooperation in research, environmental and energy policy.
Von der Leyen also reiterated her wish to end the principle of consensus-based decisions governing European foreign policy, saying it was time to “break free from the shackles of unanimity”.
In a wide-ranging speech that gestured to critics on her left, she pledged to stay the course on the EU’s climate agenda, promised a strategy to eradicate poverty in Europe by 2050 and revealed her interest in Australia’s “pioneering” social media restrictions for children. She announced that a panel of experts would look at the best approach for Europe, saying: “Parents, not algorithms, should be raising our children.”
The speech was also a response to criticism from the left over the EU’s inaction on Israel.
The leader of the Socialists in the European parliament, Iratxe García Pérez, welcomed the steps, but said they were “too little, too late”. The Socialist leader also attacked the EU trade deal with Donald Trump, which was unveiled at the US president’s golf course in the Scottish resort of Turnberry. García Pérez said the trade deal was “unacceptable” and “an abuse of power” and that von der Leyen had gone to Scotland to bury “our strategic autonomy under a golf course”.
The co-leader of the Greens, Terry Reintke, said von der Leyen had offered “a message of modest change” that needed to be implemented. “The EU gave far too much ground to Trump with the US trade deal,” she added.
The far-right Patriots group, the third-largest in the parliament, also criticised the deal. Its French leader, Jordan Bardella, said: “We were told that Europe would provide strength … Nevertheless Europe gave in on everything.”
At times von der Leyen also faced barracking from far-right MEPs, re-elected in record numbers in the 2024 European elections, who booed when she spoke of her alarm about declining vaccination rates and heckled when she announced a new European initiative to counter disinformation.
She defended her trade deal with Trump, saying that a fully-fledged trade war with the US would have led to chaos. “The deal provides crucial stability in our relations with the US at a time of grave global insecurity,” she said, arguing that some of the EU’s competitors had worse terms with the US.
She urged more sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine and said that, with allies, Europe was looking at a faster phasing-out of Russian fossil fuels, clamping down on the shadow fleet used to transport Russian oil around the world, as well as actions against countries helping Russia to evade sanctions.
Von der Leyen did not respond directly to reports that Trump had asked the EU to impose 100% tariffs on India and China in an attempt to force Putin to the negotiating table. Both countries are large buyers of Russian oil and host companies that act as intermediaries by selling western goods to Russian buyers, so evading European and US sanctions.
She said the EU was working urgently on a “a new solution to finance Ukraine’s war effort” based on an estimated €300bn (£260bn) in frozen Russian assets in the west. She floated the idea of a reparations loan for Ukraine that would leave the Russian assets legally intact.
The EU is taking interest from Russian assets held in the bloc, but has stopped short of outright confiscation, fearing damaging repercussions for eurozone stability.
