15 EU countries call on EU Commission to urgently disburse aid for Palestine

Fifteen EU countries urged the European Commission to urgently disburse aid for Palestine that has been delayed because of controversies in school textbooks, Anadolu News Agency reports.

In a letter dated 8 April and disclosed by Politico news outlet on Monday, a group of EU countries, with the leadership of Ireland, expressed concerns over “the continued delay in the disbursement of EU assistance to Palestine for 2021 due to Commission proposals to condition funding on education sector reform.”

The signatories argued that the funding should be released “as soon as possible” because “the Palestinian Authority is in a challenging situation and is experiencing a severe fiscal crisis, further compounded by the inflation of oil and wheat prices caused by the war in Ukraine.”

They also pointed out that “the conditionality at a time when the Palestinian Authority is already engaged in an ambitious program of educational reform risks undermining, or even reversing progress achieved to date.”

The letter warns that the delay “could damage our ongoing dialogue with the Palestinians on this and other issues.”

It also recalls that the European Commission’s recent proposal on linking the assistance to conditionality in the educational sector “does not enjoy broad support” among EU countries.

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By the initiative of Oliver Varhelyi, EU Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighbourhood, the European Commission proposed a conditionality mechanism for disbursing financial aid for Palestine.

The move followed a controversy on some school textbooks that allegedly contain anti-Semitic texts and incitement to violence according to critics.

The letter has been signed by the foreign ministers of Ireland, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, the Greek Cypriot administration, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.

The ministers are also expected to raise the issue at the meeting of EU top diplomats in Luxembourg on Monday.