Kallas Says EU Should Treat Israeli Settlements Like Russian-Occupied Crimea

European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has called for the bloc to adopt the same approach toward Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories that it took toward Russian-occupied Crimea.

Speaking to The Irish Times on Friday, Kallas said the EU could not be taken seriously while member states remained divided over how to respond to actions by the Israeli government and violent settlers.

She urged EU countries to adopt what she described as a “principled stance” by supporting an EU-wide ban on trade with Israeli settlements, which are considered illegal under international law.

Kallas acknowledged that the volume of trade with the settlements is relatively small but said a ban would carry significant symbolic importance.

“The question is what do we do about this? If we take the example when Crimea was occupied, then it was very clear, it's illegal, we don't recognise this, which means that we stop the trade with any products that come from Crimea,” Kallas said.

“We should have the same principled stance - you know this is illegal, everybody agrees - so we should stop trading with occupied [Palestinian] Territories,” she added.

According to Kallas, the European Commission is facing“very clear” pressure from national governments to propose an EU-wide trade ban on settlement products. She also said European institutions“get a lot of bashing” over their failure to impose sanctions on Israel amid the war in Gaza.

If introduced as an EU trade measure rather than a foreign policy decision, the proposal would require the support of a qualified majority of member states rather than unanimity. Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovenia currently oppose sanctions against Israel.

Kallas said the precedent set by the EU's response to Russia's occupation of Crimea demonstrated how the bloc could approach goods originating from territory it does not recognize as legally belonging to the occupying power.

Following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, the EU prohibited the import of goods from the peninsula and imposed a series of economic sanctions on Russia, later expanding restrictions to areas including arms, energy and technology exports.

MENAFN14092026000195011045ID1111660957