European Union leaders are making a determined push to reclaim influence in the Middle East peace process, as a historic Brussels summit on October 23, 2025, saw the bloc’s heads of state grapple with their marginalization from the latest U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. While the summit’s official agenda was dominated by the ongoing war in Ukraine and relations with Russia, the issue of Gaza and the occupied West Bank loomed large, with EU officials insisting they must not remain mere bystanders as the region’s future is shaped.
For years, the EU has prided itself on being the largest provider of aid to the Palestinians and Israel’s most significant trading partner. Yet, when the most recent ceasefire was hammered out with the help of U.S. President Donald Trump, the EU found itself on the sidelines, its diplomatic clout apparently diminished. This has prompted both soul-searching and a flurry of new initiatives in Brussels.
“It is important that Europe not only watches but plays an active role,” Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Luc Frieden declared as he arrived at the summit, according to the Associated Press. “Gaza is not over; peace is not yet permanent.” Frieden’s words echoed the frustration felt by many across the 27-nation bloc, where public outrage over the war in Gaza has driven relations with Israel to the lowest point in decades.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, seeking to reassert the EU’s leverage, announced in September 2025 plans to pursue sanctions and a partial trade suspension against Israel, aiming to pressure its government toward a sustainable peace deal in Gaza. However, the momentum behind these measures appeared to waver after the Trump-mediated ceasefire, with some European leaders suggesting that sanctions should be scrapped in light of the apparent diplomatic breakthrough.
Despite this, leaders from countries such as Ireland and the Netherlands have argued that, with fighting and instability persisting in both Gaza and the West Bank, the threat of sanctions and the partial suspension of trade remain vital tools. These measures, they contend, offer the EU much-needed leverage to urge Israel to curtail military operations and advance a genuine peace process.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for his part, has dismissed Europe’s influence with a stinging rebuke. “Europe has essentially become irrelevant and displayed enormous weakness,” he said earlier this month, as reported by the Associated Press. The EU’s exclusion from the ceasefire negotiations has only intensified European leaders’ determination to play a more assertive role in the region’s future.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has been particularly vocal, insisting that the bloc must move beyond simply funding humanitarian efforts. “The EU should play a role in Gaza and not just pay to support stability and eventually reconstruction,” Kallas stated, as cited by AP. In practical terms, this means not only continuing to provide key support for the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the occupied West Bank, but also pledging to flood Gaza with humanitarian aid and extending a West Bank police support program into Gaza itself. This would reinforce a stabilization force called for in the current 20-point ceasefire plan.
Dubravka Šuica, European Commissioner for the Mediterranean, revealed this week that the EU has also sought a seat on the plan’s “Board of Peace,” a transitional oversight body designed to monitor the ceasefire’s implementation and the wider stabilization effort.
On the ground, EU member states are already participating in international stabilization initiatives. At least two countries, Denmark and Germany, have joined the U.S.-led effort overseeing the ceasefire in Gaza, with their flags now flying at the Civil-Military Coordination Center in southern Israel. Additionally, the European Border Assistance Mission in Rafah—a longstanding EU operation on the Gaza-Egypt border—deployed 20 security border police experts from Italy, Spain, and France in January 2025. During the February-March ceasefire earlier this year, this mission helped 4,176 individuals, including 1,683 medical patients, to leave Gaza before the resumption of fighting forced a pause in operations.
Outside the EU’s official channels, individual member states have ramped up pressure on Israel in response to mounting public protests from Barcelona to Oslo. Many European capitals have formally recognized a Palestinian state, while others have taken concrete measures to curtail military support for Israel. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, for instance, described the war as a “genocide” in September 2025 and announced plans for a formal arms embargo, as well as a ban on Israel-bound fuel deliveries through Spanish ports. Slovenia followed suit in August, imposing what it called the first arms embargo by an EU member state.
The reverberations of the conflict have even reached the world of popular culture. Calls have grown across Europe to exclude Israel from the Eurovision Song Contest in response to the ongoing war. National broadcasters are set to vote in November 2025 on whether Israel should be allowed to participate in the annual musical extravaganza, a decision that will be closely watched as a barometer of public sentiment across the continent.
Despite these moves, the EU’s response has not been entirely unified. The bloc remains riven by internal divisions, with some member states advocating for a hard line against Israel, while others urge caution and continued engagement. The result has been a patchwork of national policies and a sometimes-halting collective response—though, as the Brussels summit made clear, there is a growing consensus that Europe must not cede the diplomatic field entirely to the United States or other outside powers.
As violence continues to flare in both Gaza and the West Bank, the EU faces a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, it must uphold its longstanding commitments to humanitarian aid and the two-state solution; on the other, it must find ways to exert real influence on the ground and help bring about a durable peace. Whether this new push for relevance will succeed remains to be seen, but for now, European leaders are determined not to let the fate of Gaza—and their own role in shaping it—slip out of their hands.
In the coming weeks, attention will focus on whether the EU’s diplomatic overtures and proposed sanctions can gain traction, and if European engagement will help stabilize the fragile ceasefire. The outcome of the November Eurovision vote, too, will serve as a telling indicator of just how deeply the conflict has penetrated European political and cultural life. For now, the EU’s leaders are united in one message: Europe will not simply watch from the sidelines.
