{"id":449194,"date":"2026-03-31T17:30:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T15:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2026\/03\/31\/sospendere-laccordo-di-associazione-ue-israele-raggiunto-il-primo-dei-due-obiettivi-per-obbligare-la-commissione-a-discuterne\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T18:09:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T16:09:32","slug":"suspending-the-eu-israel-association-agreement-the-first-of-two-objectives-required-to-prompt-the-commission-to-address-the-issue-has-been-achieved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2026\/03\/31\/suspending-the-eu-israel-association-agreement-the-first-of-two-objectives-required-to-prompt-the-commission-to-address-the-issue-has-been-achieved\/","title":{"rendered":"Suspending the EU-Israel Association Agreement: the first of two objectives required to prompt the Commission to address the issue has been achieved"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Brussels \u2013 There are already nearly 600,000 <a href=\"https:\/\/eci.ec.europa.eu\/055\/public\/#\/screen\/home\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><b>signatures from European citizens<\/b><\/a> calling on the European Commission to consider the&nbsp;&#8220;<strong>complete suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement in light of Israel\u2019s human rights violations<\/strong>.&#8221;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/citizens-initiative.europa.eu\/initiatives\/details\/2025\/000005_it#statements-table\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><b>The Commission\u2019s counter<\/b><\/a> is ticking up rapidly, but a first milestone has already been reached: the seven countries in which the &#8220;minimum threshold&#8221; set by the <a href=\"https:\/\/citizens-initiative.europa.eu\/index_it\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><b>European Citizens\u2019 Initiative&nbsp;<\/b><\/a>(ECI), the instrument introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon (signed on 13 December 2007 and entered into force on 1 December 2009), which allows one million citizens from at least seven Member States to compel the European Commission to consider introducing legislative initiatives. <strong>The European Commission is not obliged to propose a legislative initiative, but it is obliged, in any case, to discuss the issue and to make its decisions public<\/strong>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>At the time of writing,<strong> over 591,000 signatures (with the signatories\u2019 details) have been collected<\/strong>, so the target the organisers of &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.justiceforpalestine.eu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Justice for Palestine<\/a>&#8221; are working towards is drawing closer, but one has already been achieved: <strong>the minimum thresholds have been exceeded in no fewer than nine countries, with France setting the record by exceeding 477 per cent<\/strong> of the signatures required in that country. Even <strong>in Italy, the threshold has been surpassed<\/strong>, with a more modest but respectable 129 per cent.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Below are the figures provided by the European Commission:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;The S&amp;D Group of Social Democrats in the European Parliament has joined the call. \u201cThe Israeli government\u2019s decision to reintroduce the death penalty represents yet another serious mistake by a dangerous and irresponsible right-wing government. As the S&amp;D Group in the European Parliament, we are calling for the immediate suspension of the EU-Israel agreement,\u201d announced <strong>Nicola Zingaretti<\/strong>, head of the PD delegation to the European Parliament, in a statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The &#8220;minimum thresholds&#8221; for participation have been exceeded in more than seven countries. The petition continues to gather signatures with the aim of reaching one million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":497,"featured_media":449184,"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","show_comment_section":"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":[25890,33626,33627,27895,33394],"class_list":["post-449194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-politics","tag-accordo-associazione","tag-firme","tag-ice-en","tag-ue"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449194","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\/497"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":449195,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449194\/revisions\/449195"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}