{"id":435660,"date":"2025-09-17T17:10:39","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T15:10:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2025\/09\/17\/israele-lue-propone-sanzioni-a-due-ministri-e-dazi-su-merci-per-6-miliardi-ora-dipende-dagli-stati-membri\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T18:03:47","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T16:03:47","slug":"israel-eu-proposes-sanctions-on-two-ministers-and-trade-tariffs-now-it-is-up-to-member-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/09\/17\/israel-eu-proposes-sanctions-on-two-ministers-and-trade-tariffs-now-it-is-up-to-member-states\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel, EU proposes sanctions on two ministers and trade tariffs. Now it is up to member states"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels – While Israel besieges Gaza City<\/a> and “Gaza burns”\u2014so exulted Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz\u2014the European Commission breaks the deadlock and presents the first political and economic sanctions against Tel Aviv<\/strong> since the start of the conflict. There are three guidelines: Brussels will be able to immediately freeze some 20 million funds planned for Israel, while it will have to go through the capitals<\/strong> to impose trade tariffs on some six billion goods and restrictive measures on two of the most extremist ministers in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. <\/p>\n

Unlocking a two-year-long impasse was the growing public outrage and mobilisation, which convinced Ursula von der Leyen to announce the belated measures last week in her speech<\/a> on the State of the Union. “I want to be very clear: the goal is not to punish Israel<\/strong>. The goal is to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza,” said EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Kaja Kallas<\/strong>, presenting the package<\/a> today. <\/p>\n

With the head of EU diplomacy, there was the head of trade, Maro\u0161 \u0160ef\u010dovi\u010d<\/strong>, who rattled off figures and volumes of trade between the two partners, as well as the effects of the partial suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement,<\/strong> which the EU executive had put on the table<\/span>. Bearing in mind that the EU accounts for a third of Israel’s total trade with the world, while Israel is only the bloc’s 31st trading partner.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Kaja Kallas, Maro\u0161 \u0160ef\u010dovi\u010d and Dubravka \u0160uica present restrictive measures against Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\n

The European Commission has proposed the suspension of trade facilitation under the Association Agreement for trade in goods, participation in public procurement, and intellectual property rules, while the provisions on capital flow and customs would not be affected. By denying preferential access to the EU market, Israeli goods would be subject to the same customs duties that the EU applies to third countries<\/strong> with which it does not have a free trade agreement. <\/p>\n

In 2024, Israel exported goods worth \u20ac16 billion to the EU, while goods worth \u20ac26.7 billion went to Tel Aviv. In essence, the measures would affect 37 per cent of Israeli exports<\/strong>\u2014mainly agricultural products\u2014because the remaining 63 per cent\u2014mainly machinery, transport equipment, chemicals\u2014would remain subject to zero or very low tariffs, under the terms of the World Trade Organisation’s MFN (Most Favoured Nation) regime. <\/p>\n

The effect, therefore, would be the imposition of additional tariffs on Israeli goods worth \u20ac5.8 billion. According to the European Commission’s calculations, this would translate\u2014if trade remains at the same level as in 2024 \u2014into \u20ac227 million in tariffs within one year<\/strong>. Conversely, if Israel were to respond by raising similar barriers, duties would affect European goods worth around \u20ac8 billion. Brussels has remained deaf to calls\u2014and unilateral decisions by some member states\u2014to impose specific restrictions on trade in arms and dual-use civil-military equipment. On the contrary, according to the MFN regime, they will remain largely duty-free. <\/p>\n

The proposal, whose limited economic impact is inversely proportional to its high political value, will need to be approved by the Member States by a <\/strong><\/span>qualified majority<\/strong>. Which means that\u2014net of the opposition of countries with less specific weight, such as Hungary and the Czech Republic\u2014the fate of the proposal will be decided in particular by Italy and Germany<\/strong>, whose governments have never completely resolved their ambiguity towards the conduct of the Israeli army in Gaza. Should they step aside, Brussels will then have to inform the EU-Israel Association Council of the suspension and wait 30 days before the tariffs come into force.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir (L) and Bezalel Smotrich (Photo by AMIR COHEN \/ POOL \/ AFP)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\n

The road to a “yes” vote on restrictive measures against the ministers of national security and finance, religious extremists Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich<\/strong>, is even more complicated. Unanimity of the 27 is required to approve the sanctions. A year ago, the EU capitals rejected the same proposal, which had been put on the table by the then High Representative, Josep Borrell. In the meantime, they have been sanctioned by several EU partners, including the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Norway. And so did the Netherlands and Slovenia, independently. <\/p>\n

“You know the situation in the Council very well. Although we see that public opinion is really changing, on a political level, the positions are very similar to what they have been until now<\/strong>,” Kallas admitted, with a dark face.<\/span> In addition to the EU entry ban and the freezing of any funds on EU territory for the two ministers, the proposal includes sanctions for three Israeli settlers and six organisations responsible for violence in the occupied Palestinian territories and 10 members of the Hamas political leadership. <\/p>\n

Of the package presented today, only the stop to bilateral support<\/strong> to Israel, on which the Commission will proceed independently, is likely to survive. We are talking about \u20ac6 million annually until 2027 through the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI) and \u20ac14 million in institutional cooperation projects, including twinning and twinning projects under the EU-Israel regional cooperation mechanism.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the table are tariffs on Israeli exports worth \u20ac5.8 billion and restrictive measures for the two religious extremists, Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. In one case, a qualified majority of the 27 is needed, in the other, unanimity. Kallas: “Positions in the Council very similar to what we have had so far”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7527,"featured_media":435603,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25707],"tags":[27991,25890,26327,31310],"class_list":["post-435660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-politics","tag-gauze"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7527"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435660"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":435661,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435660\/revisions\/435661"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}