The current ceasefire in Gaza is fragile and repeatedly violated by Israeli forces. What international organisations, researchers and human rights experts have widely described as a genocide could resume at full scale at almost any moment, while the illegal occupation and colonisation of Palestine continues.
In Brussels, the debate on sanctions has so far focused on the EU–Israel Association Agreement.
While this is the right discussion to have when it comes to suspending EU trade concessions to Israel, it is much less so when it comes to direct funding of Israeli public and private organisations by the EU.
Amounting to roughly €1.1bn for the current cycle, research funding is the largest component, while financial support to Israel under the EU neighbourhood policy and regional cooperation amounts to merely €20m.
The European Commission has proposed to the council the suspension of the future access of Israeli entities to a small part of research funding, called “EIC Accelerator”. Its proposal would not even affect the €200m currently earmarked for Israeli start-ups under EIC Accelerator, but would only exclude them from future funding.
The council is stalling to approve it anyway. Yet the commission already has all the legal tools it needs to act on its own, as it has done in the case of Russia.
It does not really need the council’s qualified majority to suspend payments flowing to Israeli organisations, including those linked to the IDF, primarily via the Horizon Europe programme.
The precedent is well known. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the Commission suspended all payments to Russian entities participating in Horizon projects. Twenty-nine Russian organisations, beneficiaries of €12.6m in EU contributions, saw their contracts frozen overnight.
Crucially, Brussels did this without formally terminating the 2000 EU–Russia scientific cooperation agreement. Instead, the Commission relied on the Model Grant Agreement (MGA), the standard contract that every Horizon participant must sign.
Article 14 of that document demands compliance with the “highest ethical standards” and respect for “human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and human rights.” When those principles are breached, the Commission can reduce, suspend or terminate grants.
By invoking Article 14 of the MGA, Brussels bypassed the slower procedure of formally denouncing the scientific agreement, which required six months’ notice and, most importantly, excluded the suspension of payments for ongoing projects.
This approach allowed the EU to act quickly, limit reputational risk and protect European universities from contractual challenges.
Israel participates in Horizon Europe under a specific EU–Israel Agreement on the Participation in the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, signed in 2022. It grants Israeli entities the same access to Horizon funding as EU member states, a privilege shared by very few non-EU partners.
Despite the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures, a UN independent committee concluding that Israel has committed genocide and a note by the European External Action Service corroborating evidence of “indiscriminate attacks”, “starvation”, “torture” and “apartheid” committed by Israel, the commission’s response has been timid.
On 29 June, the commission proposed only a future exclusion of Israeli start-ups currently funded under the EIC Accelerator, a measure that would leave Israeli universities and research institutes’ funding by collaborative projects under Horizon Europe untouched, despite the links many of these universities have with the military.
Meanwhile, EU discussion remains fixated on the Association Agreement, which merely mentions scientific cooperation. But that treaty has almost nothing to do with Horizon funding.
The decisive legal instrument is the 2022 Horizon association agreement — and, even more directly, the grant contracts governed by the Model Grant Agreement.
Suspending Horizon payments to Israeli institutions would not be an act of hostility; it would be an act of administrative integrity. It would affirm that the ethical framework of European research applies universally, not selectively.
The 2022 EU–Israel Horizon agreement contains a strict termination clause: either party may withdraw with three months’ notice, but both must honour all ongoing financial commitments until completion.
This provision renders unilateral withdrawal financially burdensome for European universities. In many cases, disengagement means they have to lay off staff and face potential labour disputes.
Even so, certain institutions, such as Ghent University and Universidad de Granada, have still opted to proceed in order to comply with their internal human rights commitments. Others, like Université Libre de Bruxelles, Antwerp University, Trinity College Dublin, Universitat de Barcelona and University of Primorska in Slovenia, have suspended bilateral cooperation with Israeli partners and are going through heated internal debates about how to deal with their cooperation through Horizon consortia.
Yet, as the Russian case shows, the commission could spare them all this administrative turmoil.
By simply invoking the Model Grant Agreement’s ethical clauses, it could immediately suspend payments to Israeli entities until Israel complies with international law, while continuing to fund the European partners in the same projects.
The European Union claims to be a “values-based power.” But values lose their force when they are applied selectively.
In 2022, the Commission acted unilaterally and decisively against Russia, citing ethical obligations built into Horizon rules.
In 2025, facing graver breaches of international law by Israel, it hides behind legal complexity and the absence of a Council consensus.
If the commission truly believes that research funding must reflect European principles, the path is already written in its own regulations. No new council mandate is required, only the political will to be consistent.
Suspending Horizon payments to Israeli institutions would not be an act of hostility; it would be an act of administrative integrity. It would affirm that the ethical framework of European research applies universally, not selectively.
The EU’s scientific reputation and its moral credibility are at stake. If Brussels could freeze Russian funding overnight to defend human rights, it can - and should - do the same for Israel. Anything less would confirm that European “values” are not values at all, but instruments of convenience.
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Yiorgos Vassalos is a political science researcher and lecturer in EU studies at Université Libre de Bruxelles
Yiorgos Vassalos is a political science researcher and lecturer in EU studies at Université Libre de Bruxelles