The European Union has been forced this month to
register a European Citizens’ Initiative that seeks to block trade with settlements in occupied territories.
The measure could potentially close off the lucrative access to EU markets enjoyed by businesses operating in Israeli colonial settlements built on Palestinian land in violation of international law.
This comes after the Commission – the EU’s executive body – suffered a legal defeat earlier this year.
European Citizens’ Initiatives are supposed to provide a mechanism for ordinary people to influence the policy and legislative agenda of the notoriously undemocratic and opaque Brussels bureaucracy.
In 2019, seven nationals of EU states filed an initiative seeking to stop settlement trade which helps fuel Israeli colonization and
contributes to massive violations of Palestinian human rights.
But the Commission rejected the initiative, claiming that it did not have authority to consider what would amount to imposing sanctions. It argued that only member governments could decide on sanctions.
This contorted and arbitrary reasoning flew in the face of the Commission’s previous assertions that it alone – not EU member states – had authority to make policy about external trade.
With the assistance of the European Legal Support Center, the EU nationals took their case to court and won.
In May, the EU’s general court
ruled that the Commission failed to give adequate reasons or a sufficient legal basis for refusing to register the initiative and allowing it to move forward.
