Top EU Courts Makes Israeli “Settlement” Product Labeling Mandatory
European Court of Justice ruling to impact food products from East Jerusalem, Golan Heights, Judea, and Samaria.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that goods produced outside Israel’s pre-1967 lines must be labeled as such, and may not be marketed as Israeli products. The judgment will impact food products imported into Europe from East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, Judea, and Samaria, which the European Union does not recognize as Israeli territory.
“Foodstuffs originating in the territories occupied by the State of Israel must bear the indication of their territory of origin, accompanied, where those foodstuffs come from an Israeli settlement within that territory, by the indication of that provenance,” the top EU court declared on Tuesday morning.
The EU ruling comes after East Jerusalem-based Psagot Winery challenged an earlier French judgment ordering the labeling of “settlement” products.
“These regulations are discriminatory and serve only to lay out a red carpet for the BDS movement. Staying quiet is not an option. The only option is to fight,” an attorney representing the winery said.
The Jerusalem Post reported the ECJ court’s decision:
The European Court of Justice issued a landmark ruling on Tuesday on the legality of singling out products produced over the country’s pre-1967 lines in east Jerusalem, the Golan and the West Bank by labeling them as not made in Israel.
The issue has been a bone of contention between the European Union and Israel, since the EU in 2015 issued guideline on how its members states can legally label such products as “made in the West Bank” or “made in the Golan,” so as to distinguish those territories from internationally recognized sovereign Israel. The guidelines themselves were not mandatory, but individual member states had the option to mandate that they be used. (…)
The Psagot Winery, located in the West Bank, brought the issue to a head legally in 2016. Together with the Organization Juive Européenne (European Jewish Organization), it turned to the France’s highest court, the Conseil d’Etat to protest the country’s mandated settler product labeling, which went beyond the EU guidelines to specifically let consumer know that these products were produced in a settlement.
Last November, the French court referred the matter to the European Court, which a year later is now ready to rule.
BREAKING: EU high court rules that all EU member states must label goods from the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights and precisely identify them as products from an Israeli settlement pic.twitter.com/lzW5e13ssc
— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) November 12, 2019
The EU ruling comes on a day when more than 150 rockets have landed on towns and cities across Israel. Around 24 people have been hospitalized or treated for shock. The indiscriminate rocket fire from Hamas-controlled Gaza started after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) killed a senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad commander suspected of planning an imminent terror strike against Israel.
“This is great timing. As Israelis are holed up in bomb shelters across the country, Europe reminds us how it consistently stands on the wrong side of history,” Jerusalem Post editor-in-chie Yaakov Katz wrote on Twitter.
The Yesha Council, an umbrella organization representing Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria, slammed the discriminatory ruling, saying it will also impact Arabs employed by Israeli companies in the region.
“This is hypocritical decision, which stems from the lowest kind of anti-Semitism and we condemn it in the strongest possible terms,” the organization said in a statement.
The critics have very good reasons for questioning the motives behind the EU court ruling. The mandatory labeling policy singles out Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. China, which annexed the whole country of Tibet, or Turkey, which occupies parts of Cyprus, face no such discriminatory regime.
The Twitter-thread by George Mason University law professor Eugene Kontorovich gives us a much-needed perspective:
THREAD on the EJC decision re Israel product labelling:
1) Its as bad as was expected by observers, including myself. The Court affirms the EU’s unique labelling policy that only applies to Israeli products. Reupping my analysis when policy first adopted https://t.co/th5SKMgETL— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) November 12, 2019
Lawfare Project Director Brooke Goldstein on the EU court’s judgment
[Cover image via YouTube]
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Comments
I swear, Europe has a death wish. Too bad, I loved traveling there and wish to take my kids to see the artwork and castles and countryside.
More and More I am so grateful that my ancestors were persecuted for their various Faiths and left for a new land. It is true, I am beginning to learn, that the Lord blesses those who keep His statutes and punishes those who persecute His people, even to the third and fourth generations (and more).
On the other hand, those Euros make the trains run on time. /sarc
You mean the “U.S. Taxpayers’ Dollars.”
“I think it is safe to say the majority of American voters have no idea how deeply the global economy is dependent on systems of trade that are based on the U.S. trade deficits.”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/11/11/eu-begins-accepting-serious-consequences-from-u-s-economic-and-trade-position/
What have trade deficits to do with taxpayer dollars, or anybody’s dollars. Trade deficits do not cost us anything, and are a good thing; their only downside is that in the very long run they can’t be sustained, and eventually the currency market corrects for them. Worrying about trade deficits, and pretending they are in any way comparable to budget deficits, is the false mercantilist theory that Adam Smith thoroughly debunked in 1776.
You’re an idiot, always have been.
I love this:
“Trade deficits do not cost us anything, and are a good thing; their only downside is that in the very long run they can’t be sustained…”
They cost nothing (Hint, every country tries to have a trade surplus), they are a good thing (well except in the long run because they can’t be sustained – no shit).
Just F’in brilliant.
Just as no country created wealth through socialism, no country ever, not one, produced wealth by running trade deficits.
Rich countries can dabble in socialism, until they bankrupt the country.
Rich countries can dabble in trade deficits, until they bankrupt the country.
We’re closer to the 2nd than the first.
You’re the idiot. Read The Wealth of Nations. Or any book on economics. Trade deficits do not impoverish a country, they enrich it. Remember what a trade deficit is: we give other people paper and they give us goods. That’s wonderful. You can’t run it forever because in the very long run your currency will lose value until the deficit disappears. But if you have a strong economy you can run one for decades with no ill effects.
I’ve read it all. All horse puckey when it come to trade deficits and tariffs.
When I first traveled to China 35 years ago everyone but the high party officials rode a bicycle. You could get up in the morning and watch a tsunami of bicycles coming to work. They were lucky to get a couple bowls of rice a day to eat.
35 years later, trade surplus’s have increased the wealth in China to the point they are thought to rival the USA soon. They all drive cars now, the #2 car sales on the planet.
35 years of that hollowed out every small manufacturing town in the United States with the trade deficit.
Your books are trash. They told you lies and you’re not smart enough to look around and figure out the truth.
Name one country that has increased their wealth while running large trade deficits.
…
Times up. You can’t do it.
“Trade deficits do not impoverish a country, they enrich it.”
“You can’t run it forever…”
Genius.
That’s right. The deficit hollows out your country, robs it of all wealth until there is nothin left. Only a wealthy country can run a large deficit, and then all the wealth is gone and the people are starving.
Books that say otherwise are trash. People that cling to the words in a book while everything around is collapsing are idiots, wedded to the writings of people that never actually did anything.
Again, read The Wealth of Nations, the most basic book on economics ever. Smith’s whole point is that MONEY IS NOT WEALTH. Wealth is goods and services available to the consumer, and a trade deficit increases that. The reason you can’t run a trade deficit forever is because the people who are sending you goods in return for paper will eventually want to spend that paper, and the currency market will adjust for it by devaluing your currency until the deficit disappears. But the stronger your economy the longer that will take, so the smart thing is to enjoy it while it lasts, which can be decades.
You want an example of a country that has been enriched by trade deficits? You’re living in one. The USA has more wealth, i.e. a higher standard of living, because its people benefit from the willingness of people living elsewhere to sell us the things they work to make, and not demand goods we made in return.
Time for these countries to reorganize so all products are produced in Israel. They can assemble the products for components produced in the occupied territories.
This has the potential to backfire and for people worldwide to purchase these products for support. It is a relatively small area so it does not take a huge population of supporters to make a difference.
If there’s a list of what they are, I’ll try to buy them here in the States.
“Proudly manufactured in the Golan Heights for export to Eurabia.”
“Proudly made in France, once controlled by and collaborating with The Third Reich.”
“The EU – Proudly doing the work the Third Reich left Unfinished”
How about a product label that reads, “Produced in land lost by belligerent Arab jihadists, after attacking Israel.”
Wonder when they are getting around to applying this to every area under contention?
Or maybe it’s a Jews only law??
“Jews only” – as dictated by the red robed devils.
It is a Jews only law. Even products made in the same area, but by Arabs, are not to be labeled like that, but are in fact to be labeled “Made in Palestine”, which doesn’t exist.
Remember that the definition of a “settlement” is any place in the “territories” where Jews live. If a Jew rents an apartment in Ramallah, by definition that apartment is a “settlement”, but the other apartments in the same building are not.
Can anyone else point to an historical example where a nation that won territory in a defensive response to an attack initiated by the losing aggressor, was pressured to return the land lost by the attacking state, thus rewarding it for its belligerence, and, for its failure on the battlefield? I can’t come up with a similar situation.
These lands shouldn’t be labeled “disputed” or “occupied” — they were lost by the Arabs because of their childish and perpetual belligerence against Israel, and their incompetence on the battlefield.
They are just laying the groundwork for the US to get returned to the UK.
And France, Italy, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic and parts of Russia to Germany…but isn’t most of that already under German control.
maybe they can get Russia to take back California
In 1956, US president Eisenhower forced Israel, the UK, and France to give the Sinai peninsula and the Suez canal back to Egypt. People forget that the worst US president ever for Israel was not 0bama, not Carter, but Eisenhower, a Republican.
The theory under which these territories are different is that international law changed with the adoption of the UN Charter, and that is when the acquisition of territory through war, even defensive war, became illegal. Thus the border changes made by the Potsdam Agreement were fine because they came before the UN Charter, but Israel’s very existence (though they won’t say that) is illegitimate because it came after that. It’s a very convenient theory for those who tout it, but it’s transparent garbage.
Of course it doesn’t. The last thing the EU wants to do is piss of China. And as for Turkey? Erdogon holds the EU hostage to his whims on pain of flooding the EU with millions of “immigrants” if they don’t do what he wants.
Darn. You got to it first!
I have a set of binoculars received from my uncle, a WWII merchant mariner. Stamped right on them: “Made in Occupied Japan”.
I’m not going to say that the Buderus boiler in my basement is old, but it’s stamped “Made in West Germany”.
What? An American-made boiler not good enough?
Globalists sure know how to gobble…
Now, we need to require labeling of goods made in slave labor or prison camps. I’m thinking of our esteemed, most-favored-nation trading partner, China.
Can you imagine if the EU court ruled that everything manufactured in the newest 37 American states be labeled as being made in occupied Indian territory? This is the same thing. And it is going to hurt working-class Arabs who live in Golan and West Bank the most.
Hawaiians are not Indians. I strongly suggest not referring to them as such if you visit there.
Indians aren’t Indians either. So what?
🙂
Which ones? Casino? Or Call Center?
I do not understand why Psagot Winery appealed the French decision. How could Psagot Winery have possibly thought that the ECJ would overturn the French decision. The situation is now worse. Israel has gone from the frying pan to the fire.
I agree with you on that
The EU of BDS.
That is like preventing food produced outside the original 13 states from being described as being produced in America.
Edit: Products not food.
If I am ever in Europe (which this makes less likely to happen) and shopping, I’ll look out for this label and try to buy the products.
A Treaty with any of these countries is absolutely worthless.
Well, proper labeling makes them easier to buycott. If I’m looking for something and see that on the label, that’s the one I’ll buy.