Brussels, 27/11/2013 (Agence Europe) - Following considerable efforts of political and semantic sleight of hand, the EU and Israel on Tuesday 26 November found common ground on the guidelines, which the European Commission updated in July of this year, on the country's participation in the programmes and financial instruments of the EU in the framework of the financial perspectives 2014-2020.
Under this compromise, the bilateral agreements will not recognise territory occupied since June 1967 and any European funding of Israeli entities located there will be impossible. For its part, although it has accepted this principle, Israel stresses that it does not recognise this non-recognition.
A compromise of this kind, in which each party ended up holding onto its starting position, comes not a moment too soon, as the first calls for projects for the next framework programme of the EU for research and innovation (Horizon 2020) will start in mid-December, and Israel is expected to be one of the first non-EU countries to be involved and to benefit from a proportion of the budgetary envelope, unusual in that it is the only one which has increased compared to the years 2007-2013, by €70.2 billion (2011 prices). No real surprises, then, that it was on Horizon 2020 that it was possible to negotiate a compromise on these infamous guidelines.
The compromise was announced in a joint declaration by Catherine Ashton, High Representative of the EU Foreign Affairs, and Tzipi Livni, Israeli Justice Minister. The declaration states that “the agreement fully respects the EU's legal and financial requirements while at the same time respecting Israel's political sensitivities in preserving its principled pos itions”. The agreement will “pave the way for Israel's participation in other EU programmes to be launched from 1 January 2014”, the statement added. (JK/transl.fl)