In an article published by Carnegie last month, Rosa Balfour declared the EU’s foreign policy – dead. The death of its foreign policy came after the events in the Middle East that proceeded from October 7 and the EU found itself completely incapable of managing the bilateral conflict which has now escalated into a regional war. The immediate response of the EU was the suspension of aids to Palestine but only to backtrack later and deciding instead to review it.

The EU’s ineffectiveness in its foreign policy exercise is visible in its inability to persuade Israel to end its illegal occupation of the West Bank and influence the domestic politics of either Israel or Palestine. So far there has been no condemnation by the EU on Israel’s settler policies, and the violent acts committed by both Israeli officials. Israel has increasingly legitimized the settlement construction which receives full support from the Netanyahu led government. The expansion of settlement activities in the West Bank are reflective of the right ward drift in Israeli politics which has negatively influenced the peace process and relations with Palestine and the neighboring countries, particularly Iran.

This relative failure of EU’s foreign policy is a contradiction to the remarkable success that EU foreign policymakers had displayed in carving a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran. Europe also played a significant role in driving the Oslo Peace Accords and positioning itself as a trailblazer for the two-state solution. Many even thought that the EU could become a credible actor vis-à-vis the US in the Middle East, but that now is all in the past. Today, as the violence in the region escalates, the EU has reduced to a passive bystander that is distracted with its own internal divisions.

The division was strife when the Visegrad countries (Hungary, Slovakia, Czechia, and Poland) blocked joint statements warning Israel to stop the annexation of parts of West Bank. The Hungarian government’s stubbing of any Israeli criticisms in the EU stems from two reasons. Firstly, it is owing to the political connections between the two governments as they share common ideology and values. Secondly, Hungary and Israel share strong trade and security relations. Hungary also supports Israel in its global fight against antisemitism.

Further, the disunity was made apparent in how the member states within the bloc voted in the UN resolution 2023 calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and unconditional release of the hostages. Currently, the EU member states are split into three camps: pro-Israel, pro-Palestine, and the balancers.

The fragmentation also extends to the EU institutions with the European Commission taking a more balanced approach while the European Parliament taking a more critical approach to the issue. The EP has been demanding for elections to be held in Palestine which has not taken place since 2006. The European Council president Charles Michel and Josep Borrell, the EU’s High Representative have taken a more moderate position speaking out more frankly on the conflict.

The EU’s inability to exercise its autonomy in foreign policy is also owing to its strategic dependency on the US. The Biden administration has refrained from pressurizing the Israeli government which gives de facto rights to them to continue their war in Gaza and now to Lebanon. The political developments in Ukraine and Gaza and the Western responses to them have once again presented the double standards of the West. It has watered down the EU’s two-year long efforts to persuade Global South countries to align with their position on the Russia-Ukraine war. European efforts to get the rest of the world to pander to the narrative that Ukrainian support was premised on a universal principle of international law was completely thrown off-grid when the same logic was not extended to Gaza.

The war in Gaza thus projects a moral failure for the EU. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling this year rejecting Israel’s presence in the Palestinian territory and declaring its practice of differential legal regimes applied to Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank as violation of international laws opens the door for the EU to push for Israeli de-occupation. The ICJ ruling is bound to complicate the EU’s relations with Israel as it is a signatory to the court. It also raises significant questions on the legitimacy of the EU as an actor that adorns liberal values and respects international law.

Any efforts to resurrect EU’s foreign policy will be limited by a Europe that is fraught with increasing populist and nationalist tendencies. The rise of far right parties in a growing number of national governments in the EU is a wider trend engulfing Europe and has the potentials to disrupt and further polarize the EU’s foreign policy including discussions on the Middle-East. Majority of the political elites in the EU are driven by a strong cultural closeness with Israel and an asserting backlash against Islam and Arabs in the wake of the October 7 attack. These sentiments are emerging in the context of growing identity politics in Europe that has trumped liberal values and international law. On the broader political front, the EU gets charged with being selectively moral and therefore displaying incoherence in its responses. The double standard displayed by the EU provides an additional layer of cover for Israel’s violation of the international law and completely discredits the already fragile international rules-based architecture. And all of this under the garb of Israel’s self-determination to defend itself.

To recapture any geopolitical significance, the EU needs to abandon its old ways of playing by the rule of law which clearly does not apply to the Israeli case and find new way to revive its foreign policy or else it will cease to matter in international politics. If the EU is serious about having a two-state solution, it needs to first have a unified voice on it. It needs to place Palestinian rights on the top of the agenda which would pressurize the Israeli government to end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territories. A war-torn Israel is particularly vulnerable, and the EU can leverage its trading powers and suspend trade relations with Israel. But this is highly unlikely to happen as the costs for such measures may prove expensive for the EU than Israel. At the same time, the EU needs to push for a democratic political renewal in Palestine itself.

A geopolitical EU calls for surpassing the existing challenges to achieve the goals of strategic autonomy that it championed upon. This would also mean de-coupling itself from the US especially as the upcoming elections next month could signal the return of Trump. It is not a secret that he has been calling on Europe to pay more for its own security and would seriously cut funds for NATO. Unless the EU member states decide to pool in more of their sovereignty in foreign policy and security, the EU’s efforts to become geopolitical actor will fall short, leaving it unable to defend either its interests or its values. It must resurrect itself from the graves!