Strasbourg, 09/04/2002 (Agence Europe) - At a press conference, the Co-President of the Greens/EFA group, Daniel Cohn-Bendit (French Green MEP of German origin) explained why his group was calling for the suspension of the Association Agreement between the EU and Israel. He said it was "unacceptable" the way the Israeli government was treating the European Union and its representatives, going against the "culture of Association", noting that Israel itself had thereby de facto suspended the Association Agreement. The European Union mustn't be a masochist, he said, but must take action and punish this political behaviour. Mr Cohn-Bendit pointed out that in the Greens/EFA and other groups, there were splits as to whether the Association Agreement should be frozen, saying that it was not the state of Israel but the attitude of the Sharon government that was being targeted and the two should not be confused. He said that the Israeli offensive in the Palestinian Territories proved that Europe had to stand up for itself and provide the means for genuine autonomy in the common foreign and security policy at all levels, political, strategic and military. Joining Flemish regionalist Nelly Maes (Volksunie) in calling for an interposition force, he said that such an initiative was still vetoed by the US and Israel but the EU should go ahead anyway. We could decide today, he said, to send 2000 observers, whether the UN and Israel say yes or not. If one is obsessed with the Security Council, it's checkmate, he added. The GUE/NGL and the Socialist groups also favour the suspension of the Agreement, explained Greens/EFA Co-President Monica Frassoni (Belgian Green MEP of Italian origin), adding that the views of the other groups might change, the Liberal group having come out against suspension, for example, but 40% of its members favour suspension.
At another press conference, French Socialist MEP Pervenche Berès said that within the PES group, Spanish, German and Italian MEPs were particularly keen on the Agreement being suspended, but other delegations still opposed it. She said that Hubert Védrine and Lionel Jospin's felt it would be counterproductive to suspend the Agreement. Most of the French delegation echoed the rest of the PES in favouring suspension of the Agreement, but Ms Berès and other MEPs, like François Zimeray, will vote against.
Recognising that the Israeli refusal to let EU representatives visit whomsoever they wanted was unacceptable, EPP-ED group President Hans-Gert Pöttering (CDU, Germany) told reporters that most of the EPP-ED did not favour a suspension of the Association Agreement, but he hoped a special meeting of the EU-Israel Association Agreement Council would be convened, as the President of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, had proposed.