Billions flow from EU institutions to Israel

Public institutions in European Union countries are signing profitable contracts with Israeli companies despite Israel’s long track record of war crimes in the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank, data collected by Statewatch and revealed by Al Jazeera shows.

The figures show Spain, among Europe’s most vocal critics of Israel, agreed to 14 contracts worth almost 227 million euros ($257m) between January 2022 and July 2025, the period covered by the data set.

The majority of that sum – 207 million euros ($235m) – stems from an April 2024 contract between the Spanish Defence Ministry and Rafael for “aerial combat systems”. Spanish police forces also purchased bulletproof vests from Israeli company Marom Dolphin.

Overall the data shows that public institutions in EU member states signed 194 contracts worth nearly 2.7 billion euros ($3.1bn) with Israeli companies. The real value is likely to be higher, as publicly available EU files report a fraction of the contracts and list some with improbably low-value contracts below one euro.

The number of contracts grew after Israel launched its war on Gaza. In the first 21 months, between January 2022 and October 2023, the data set shows 82 deals worth over 1.2 billion euros ($1.36bn). More than half of them – 112 contracts worth 1.6 billion euros ($1.8bn) – were signed in the following 21 months, between October 2023 and July 2025.

The business-as-usual attitude adopted by the EU stands in contrast with ongoing trials against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for violating the Genocide Convention in the Gaza Strip. In 2024, the ICJ found a “real and imminent risk” of irreparable harm to Palestinians and ruled that all states should neither assist nor facilitate Israel’s continued unlawful presence in the occupied territories.

Yussef Al Tamimi, an assistant professor at the Department of Legal Studies at the Central European University in Vienna, Austria, told Al Jazeera that the EU’s permissive approach towards Israel was “legally untenable”.

The ICJ “set out unambiguous obligations for all states to take measures that eliminate, alleviate and rectify the illegal occupation of Palestine,” Al Tamimi said, noting the court issued an opinion that is “binding on all EU member states by virtue of these agreements and as a matter of customary international law”.

The vast majority of contracts in the 42-month period were for advanced technologies and other goods that require precision engineering, extensive technical expertise and specialised manufacturing facilities, including weapons systems and computer chips.