As the EU-Israeli research funding programme HORIZON 2020 continues to allocate citizens tax money to big business, civil society keeps pressuring the EU to comply with its own ethical policies and its obligations under international law. Military companies – including Israeli military and security companies – are heavily funded by the EU. This is a direct channel to support the development of new technologies for Israel’s systematic oppression of the Palestinian People. Despite the EU ethics norms require avoidance of dual use, misuse or mission/function creep of the research results, the EU still fails to answer concerns that the new technologies may be used for war crimes.
Palestinian and European civil society pressures the EU to drop funding to Israeli military and security companies and institutions in accordance to its ethical norms. Funding such entities will in fact produce the development of technologies relevant to both civilian and military application, which according to ethical norms are not to be funded under Horizon 2020. The analysis of current and past projects, shows how technologies produced throughout the EU funding programmes are directly linked to Israeli violations of International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law. Israel has no shame in admitting that, as the Chairman of the Israel Space Agency, puts it: “because we are a small country, if you build a small-satellite production line, say at IAI, it will be used for military and for commercial.” The EU responses to this issue have been vague and failed to address the core of the problem.
If despite the several mechanisms put in place by the ethical committee, this issue still fails to be addressed, the European Ethical Procedures need to be called into question.
The funding need to be stopped now for Europe to take a step further towards compliance with International Law and its Ethic Norms.
For more information about the Dual Use and Misuse problems, see here
