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

Kaja Kallas, the European Union's foreign policy chief, told The Irish Times on Friday that the bloc should stop trading with Israeli settlements the same way it stopped trading with Russian-occupied Crimea.

"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. We should have the same principled stance."

Kallas said Europe "could not be taken seriously" while divided over how to respond to the Israeli government and settler violence, according to the interview. She said the volume of goods produced in the settlements is small, but a ban would carry symbolic weight.

The path she described would route the measure through EU trade law rather than foreign policy, which requires unanimity among all 27 member states. A trade-based ban would need only a majority. Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovenia currently oppose sanctions on Israel, according to Middle East Eye's reporting, which would block a unanimous foreign-policy vote but not a majority trade vote.

Kallas said the European Commission is under "very clear" pressure from national governments to bring forward an EU-wide trade ban, and that European institutions "get a lot of bashing" over their failure to sanction Israel during the war in Gaza.

The settlement trade in the occupied West Bank is widely regarded as illegal under international law, a position the EU itself has held for years without moving to enforce it through sanctions.

A shifting bloc, an unmoved minority

Kallas's comments follow a wave of national moves that have outpaced Brussels. The UK announced sanctions on Israeli settlements on September 8. Ten other European countries and Canada signed a joint statement with Britain pledging to introduce national measures or support EU-wide restrictions on settlement trade, according to Middle East Eye.

Israel's response to the UK's move was immediate. Foreign Minister Gideon Saar announced counter-sanctions, including closing the British consulate in occupied East Jerusalem and barring 11 British MPs from entering Israel. US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee accused UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, who is Jewish, of "Jew hate" over the sanctions and threatened retaliation, per the outlet's reporting.

The pressure comes weeks after Israel approved construction of the E1 settlement project in August, a plan for 3,400 new housing units in occupied Palestinian territory that drew wide international condemnation and would further sever East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank.

Kallas's own record on Israel has not been static. Middle East Eye reports she has privately compared Israel's treatment of Palestinians to apartheid-era South Africa, a claim the outlet attributes without naming a source. That sits against her public remarks in March 2025, when she told reporters the EU stood "in solidarity with Israel and its people" and affirmed the importance of Israel's security to the bloc.

Whether the Commission tables a formal proposal, and whether it survives the objections of Berlin, Budapest, Prague and Ljubljana, remains open. For now, Kallas has put the comparison to Crimea on the record, in an interview, by name.