Against the background of the escalating Middle East conflict, the European Union Parliament (EUP) adopted yesterday, April 10, a resolution calling for the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which grants Israel preferential trade terms with the EU. The move follows the refusal of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to let a EU high-level delegation meet President Arafat.
However, the resolution’s impact is likely to remain limited given the EUP’s consultative role. It is rather the European Council, a meeting of the 15 members’ heads of state, which has the power to conclude and break such agreements. Some 269 EUP members supported the declarative resolution, while 208 opposed it and 22 abstained.
The resolution also called to institute an arms embargo on Israel and Palestine and urged full and immediate withdrawal of the Israeli army from the Palestinian territories, including Ramallah. The resolution strongly condemned all indiscriminate terrorist attacks by suicide bombings against Israel and called on the Palestinian Authority to make greater efforts to prevent acts of terrorism. At the same time, it condemned the military escalation pursued by the Sharon government, the oppression of the Palestinian civilian population by the Israeli army and the systematic destruction of infrastructures on the West Bank.
Israel's exports to the EU totaled $7.7 billion last year, accounting for 31 percent of all Israeli exports, according to the country’s Central Bureau of Statistics. Israel imported some $13.9 billion worth of European goods and services in the year 2001, amounting to 41 percent of the country’s total imports. EU exports to Israel account for a mere one percent of the Union’s total exports.
The EU-Israel Association Agreement, which entered into force on June 1, 2000, is one of a series of similar Euro-Mediterranean Association Agreements signed or under negotiation between the EU and its 12 partners in the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership program. One of the aims of these agreements is to create the basis for a Euro-Mediterranean Free Trade Area by 2010.
The 626 representatives in the EUP in Strasbourg represent some 375 million citizens in 15 countries that make up the EU. Elected every five years since 1979, the EUP is a consultative assembly whose decisions are recommendations and not mandatory. — (menareport.com)
© 2002 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
