In 2022, negotiations on a police agreement between the European Union and the Israeli government reportedly came to a halt over concerns related to Israel’s occupation of Palestine.1 Yet, an investigation by Statewatch shows discussions have continued—and involve a standoff between the European Commission and the Council of the European Union.
Statewatch has learned that not only could the agreement be in breach of international law, but that the Commission kept negotiating even during the ongoing genocide against the Palestinians. If adopted, the deal may allow for the exchange of sensitive personal data between the EU and Israel, which could be used in occupied territories. Experts warn this could lead to state-sanctioned human rights violations against both Palestinians and Israelis.
Drawing on leaked documents and internal files, Statewatch has reconstructed what led to the standoff between the European governing bodies, what has happened since, and what the proposed agreement entails.
Timeline of the Europol-Israel agreement
Relations between Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, and Israel date back almost as far as the agency’s own history. In 2005, the Council designated Israel as one of Europol’s priority partners. Yet, several obstacles delayed negotiations for an initial agreement, including:
- Israel’s compliance with the EU’s data protection standards; and
- the location of the Israeli National Police headquarters in East Jerusalem—a territory internationally recognised as occupied by Israel.
In 2018, the two sides signed a ”working arrangement”, the first ever concluded by Europol with a non-EU country. This arrangement established a framework for operational cooperation—parameters which meant it didn’t require additional approval from the European Parliament. However, this also meant the arrangement did not authorise the exchange of personal data, as authorisation would necessitate further scrutiny under EU norms. To enable such an exchange, the Commission was mandated to negotiate a new deal.
This new text would constitute an international agreement governed by international law. Procedures would be stricter, and oversight stronger – at least on paper.
A leaked legal opinion from November 2022 by the Council Legal Service2 helps reconstruct the sequence of events. The EU Restricted document states that negotiations between the Commission and the Israeli government concluded in September 2022, when both sides signed off on a draft agreement.
To become law, however, the text then needed to be approved by both the Council and the European Parliament. Concerned by the contents of the proposed agreement, the Council halted the process and asked its Legal Service to assess its compliance with EU and international law.
The resulting legal opinion left little room for doubt: the Commission had included provisions breaching EU and international law, and failed to keep the Council informed throughout the negotiations.
The Council’s lawyers concluded that the Commission should remove all text that would legitimise Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territory.
As one footnote to the opinion put it, if that draft of the proposed agreement was accepted:
“it would be the first time that an international agreement between the Union and Israel would provide for its application to the territories occupied by Israel in 1967.”
This related to a provision in the draft agreement that said personal data transferred to Israel could not be used in “geographic areas that came under the administration of the State of Israel after 5 June 1967”. This would mean that data could not be used in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the Gaza Strip.
Yet the text introduced a significant exception. Israel’s “competent authorities” would be allowed to use personal data received from Europol— and, by extension, from EU member states and agencies—in the occupied territories in two cases:
- “for the prevention of a criminal offence in case of an imminent threat to life”
- “for the prevention, investigation, detection, or prosecution of criminal offences.”
The “competent authorities” include the Israeli National Police, the Internal Security Agency (Shin Bet) and other Israeli law enforcement bodies.
The Legal Service questioned both the clarity of those provisions and whether they gave Europol more power than permitted by the EU’s founding treaties. It also warned that extending the agreement to the occupied territories would mean applying it in areas subject to separate legal jurisdictions: those of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and of the Syrian Arab Republic in the Golan Heights, which Israel annexed in 1981.
The draft agreement’s breach of international law
The exception outlined in the draft agreement marks a significant departure from the EU’s long-held position that its agreements with Israel should not apply to the territories occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War.
According to the Legal Service’s assessment, the arrangement would therefore conflict with the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination under international law.3 It would also go against the principle of the Vienna Convention, which states that international treaties should not damage third parties. The proposed text would damage the Palestinian Authority’s capacity to negotiate similar agreements.
Still, during internal meetings in October 2022, the Commission sought to justify the exception by invoking “Israel’s duty under international humanitarian law to restore and maintain public order and safety in the territories controlled by its forces.”
The Council’s Legal Service rejected that argument, claiming:
“Israel’s duty as occupying power to ensure public order and safety in the occupied territories does not imply that other States or international organisations would be allowed to assist it in the fulfilment of that duty, in violation of other principles of international law.”
Ben Saul, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, added to this view. Speaking to Statewatch, he said the proposed derogation appeared to contravene “the duty of European states not to recognise situations arising from breaches of peremptory norms of international law.”
Eitan Diamond, head of Diakonia‘s International Humanitarian Law Centre in Jerusalem, said the Legal Service’s reasoning was further reinforced by the International Court of Justice’s July 2024 advisory opinion. The court concluded that Israel must “end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible” and that all states and international organisations must avoid actions that could help maintain that unlawful presence.
EU Commission acting outside EU law
The Council Legal Service also concluded that the Commission had exceeded the mandate given to it by the Council and breached several provisions of EU law.
The opinion states:
“In its role as negotiator the Commission did not respect Article 3 of the Council Decision authorising the Commission to open negotiations.”
This also implied a breach of EU treaty requirements on both the negotiation of international agreements and “the duty of sincere cooperation between institutions.”
During the initial 2018-2022 talks, the Commission did not consult the Council working party assigned to monitor the negotiations, nor inform it of the proposed exception. The Legal Service therefore concluded:
“it is for the Council to decide whether the negotiations should be continued […] and whether to address to the Commission an additional set of negotiating directives”
When asked for an update on the agreement by Statewatch, the Council said that “the negotiating mandate approved by the Council in 2018 has not been modified and still applies.” The Council hasn’t then followed its own legal office’s suggestions. Far from sight—and without addressing concerns—negotiations keep happening.
A response to Statewatch’s request for related documents revealed that Commission officials held at least seven meetings with Israeli diplomats on the proposed agreement between 2023 and 28 January 2026. These included one with Israel’s then foreign minister, Eli Cohen, in April 2023. The response only included a list of document titles, so the contents of these meetings remain unknown.
When Statewatch asked the Commission whether it had prepared a revised draft in response to the Legal Service objections, and whether a timeline had been set for the agreement’s adoption, they replied:
“The Commission does not comment on the content of confidential exchanges, meetings or negotiating positions relating to international negotiations, including those with Israel.”
At the end of July, 27 members of the European Parliament submitted a written question asking the Commission to clarify the purpose of these meetings, the current state of the negotiations, and the human rights risks associated with the agreement.4
Contacted multiple times, the Israeli embassy to the EU, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Israeli National Police have not replied to information requests.
Mounir Satouri, a French Green member of the European Parliament, told Statewatch:
“we are facing a double scandal. First, the Commission negotiated a police cooperation agreement with Israel even as numerous experts, and a report by its own European External Action Service, were documenting serious violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza. Second, it did so in the utmost secrecy, shielded from Parliament’s scrutiny.”
He added:
“Negotiations on this agreement must be suspended immediately. The Commission has disgraced itself by conducting them.”
Spanish MEP Hana Muro Jalloul (Socialists & Democrats) told Statewatch:
“Security is important, as is the fight against terrorism and serious crimes covered by the agreement; but that does not exempt us from complying with the law. In Europe, we don’t use the security argument to violate the law.”
Implications for human rights and data protection
Institutions and experts contacted by Statewatch have additionally warned: if adopted, the proposed Europol-Israel agreement could create significant human rights risks for Palestinians living under occupation, as well as for Israeli citizens.
At the centre of these warnings is the transfer and “further processing” of sensitive personal data. This would include a range of information—described in the proposed text as:
“racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, Genetic Data, Biometric Data… data concerning health, or data concerning a natural person’s sex life or sexual orientation.”
Regarding this issue, Israeli Lawyer Eitan Diamond explained:
“beyond the territorial application, there’s other serious concerns that should urge the EU to halt the course of these negotiations and forbid certain data exchange practices”.
Among the concerns is Israel’s regime of administrative detention and use of extrajudicial killings. Currently, about 3500 Palestinians are jailed—in most cases without any detailed accusation.
According to Diamond, “there are serious grounds for concern that Palestinian prisoners are regularly subjected to ill-treatment and torture in Israeli detention.” Should the agreement be signed, he warned:
“the EU would risk having a hand in arbitrarily depriving people of their liberty and subjecting them to systematic ill-treatment under hellish conditions of detention.”
He added that “information transferred thanks to this agreement might be used as intelligence in support of decisions to target and kill Palestinians.”
Raji Sourani, a Palestinian lawyer from Gaza, said he would be “incredibly worried if such an agreement is adopted.” Sourani was himself held in administrative detention by Israel in the 1980s and was forced to flee Gaza in 2024. His organisation, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, was sanctioned by the US administration in 2025 over its involvement in cases brought against Israel before the International Criminal Court.
Sourani added:
“The cooperation envisaged by this agreement is rooted in Europe’s racist colonial mentality and goes against us, against the victims of genocide…It’s like trusting Hitler with the data of Jews.”
Many have also expressed concerns over the potential for breaches of data protection, should the agreement be adopted. Professor Ben Saul told Statewatch:
“there are further concerns about the adequacy of Israel’s data protection framework and safeguards, particularly in light of discrimination in law enforcement, the independence of judicial decisions concerning the occupation, and the use of artificial intelligence in data collection, analytics and military targeting.”
Contacted for this investigation, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS)5stated that “independent supervision is not merely good practice.”
According to them, the key safeguard ensuring that personal data is handled in accordance with EU standards is the existence of an independent supervisory authority. Such an authority must be “legally and functionally independent and have jurisdiction over all public authorities receiving or using personal data under the agreement.”
However, Israel’s data protection authority, the Privacy Protection Authority, operates within the Ministry of Justice. The government appoints its leadership, and questions have been raised about the extent of its oversight powers over intelligence bodies such as the Shin Bet.
Douwe Korff, a legal scholar and fellow at Yale University, and associate with the University of Oxford, told Statewatch that “Israeli security agencies can intercept and track data as they like, without oversight that meets the EU rules on such matters”.
“It is deeply concerning —added Korff— that the Commission appears to nevertheless again consider sharing highly sensitive data on individuals in the EU and any communications they may have with individuals – including local and international aid workers, officials and journalists in Israel and the Occupied Territories – with agencies of a state that has committed targeted killings of children, aid workers and journalists on an unheard scale, and that is credibly accused of genocide and other war crimes.”
According to Greens MEP Mounir Satouri:
“this agreement would also worsen the situation of Palestinians in Europe. Under Israeli pressure, ordinary human rights defenders are already being obstructed within the EU. With an agreement like this, the harassment will go even further, and it will become even harder to live as a Palestinian in Europe.”
Responding to Statewatch‘s questions, the European Commission said that it:
“seeks to ensure that agreements providing for the exchange of personal data with third countries contain safeguards protecting fundamental rights, including data protection safeguards, such as restrictions on the use of data in connection with the death penalty.”
Yair Dvir, the spokesperson for Israel’s NGO B’Tselem, told Statewatch:
“At a time when European states have failed to halt Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, deepening cooperation with Israel’s surveillance and law enforcement agencies is particularly alarming.”
Agreement or not, Europol-Israel contact continues
Europol told Statewatch that it had been invited to participate in the negotiations, but only “in a passive listening mode/observer role.” Asked whether the proposed agreement would have allowed personal data exchanged through Europol to be used in the occupied territories, the agency said it “is not in a position to answer.” It specified that, “in the context of the negotiations of the aforementioned draft agreement, Europol did not visit the headquarters of the National Police of Israel in East Jerusalem.”
Documents obtained by Statewatch through transparency requests show that Europol nevertheless hosted Israeli delegations—including representatives of the Israeli National Police—on at least four occasions between August 2024 and March 2026. The meetings, involving several departments within the agency, were facilitated by Israel’s liaison officer at Europol and culminated in a visit by Israel’s ambassador to the agency’s headquarters in March 2026.
Europol’s Fundamental Rights Officer, an internal position created in 2022, told Statewatch that until now, it hasn’t assessed Europol’s respect for fundamental rights in its cooperation with Israel.
Image credits: © European Union, 202X, licensed under CC BY 4.0
Graphics: McKensie Marie, with adapted versions of “World Economic Forum Annual Meeting” by World Economic Forum, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 and Instagram photo by israelpolice
This article was produced as part of the Bertha Challenge Fellowship
EU Freezes Europol Ties Over Incoming Government Policies, Israeli Sources Say – Israel News
The Council Legal Service is the Council of the European Union’s more than 300-strong legal advisory department
The right to self-determination is an established tenet of international law, provided for by United Nations resolutions and under the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union
Formally, the Commission has 6 weeks to issue a reply. However, given the summer break, it may be later.
The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) is the body responsible for monitoring the EU institutions’ and Europol’s compliance with data protection rules, including in the context of international agreements