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Belgium’s foreign minister accused the European Commission on Monday of taking “insufficient” action against trade with illegal Israeli settlements as a push to clamp down divides EU countries.
EU foreign ministers gathered in Brussels are due to discuss a paper written by Ursula von der Leyen’s EU executive, and seen by POLITICO, that pitches various options for limiting trade with the West Bank settlements, including “prohibitive tariffs” and a licensing system.
But this paper falls short of Belgium’s demands for concrete proposals to ban or limit trade, according to Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot — who said the Commission had circulated the paper to give countries a “bone to chew on.”
“The European Commission has finally proposed some options over two pages,” Prévot told journalists on his way into the Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Brussels. “So this is the feeling they have thrown out a bone to chew on rather than any real will to go forward.”
