Key facts
- The European Commission said it will reply by May 2027 on whether it plans any action in response to the petition.
- France supplied the most signatures with 339,479, followed by Italy with 283,863 and Spain with 151,821.
- The European Left Alliance, an umbrella group for 11 left-wing parties, started the petition almost two years before November 12, 2026.
- The EU is Israel's biggest trading partner, accounting for about a third of its total trade in goods in 2025, per EU data.
- Only 14 of 136 registered EU Citizens' Initiatives in more than a decade had reached the 1 million-signature threshold.
The European Commission will examine its association agreement with Israel after more than 1.1 million EU citizens signed a petition asking it to do so, the EU executive said in a press release on November 12, 2026.
The Commission said it will meet the petition's organizers in the coming weeks to discuss the initiative in detail, and that the European Parliament will then organize a public hearing. The Commission will reply by May 2027 on whether it plans to take any action in response to the petition.
The petition was started almost two years before November 12, 2026 by the European Left Alliance, an umbrella group for 11 left-wing political parties. The group said the EU should suspend its trade and political dialogue with Israel over what it sees as the country's failure to prevent genocide in Gaza.
France accounted for the most signatures with 339,479, followed by Italy with 283,863 and Spain with 151,821. Out of 136 registered petitions under the EU Citizens' Initiative in more than a decade, only 14 had reached the 1 million-signature threshold required to be brought before the EU executive. The mechanism requires signatures from more than 1 million EU citizens from more than seven countries.
The association agreement was originally signed in 1995 and came into force in 2000, covering political dialogue and trade between the EU and Israel. The bloc is Israel's biggest trading partner, accounting for about a third of its total trade in goods with the world in 2025, according to EU data.