European Parliament: No EU Funding Should Link to Terrorism and Radicalization; Textbooks Inciting to Violence

Today the plenary of the European Parliament gives its (annual) discharge[1] for the general budget of the European Commission for the financial year 2018 and adopted the relating report regarding this discharge with observations and recommendations for the future budget.

ELNET applauds the European Parliament for including strong wording in the report, relevant for EU funding for the Palestinian Authority. For the first time, the report requests the European Commission to guarantee that no EU funds are used to finance textbooks and educational material that incite religious radicalization, intolerance, ethnic violence, and martyrdom among children. Secondly, the Parliament insists the European Commission to ensure that no EU funding is allocated or linked to any cause or form of terrorism and/or religious and political radicalization.

The annual discharge procedure allows the European Parliament to hold the European Commission politically accountable for the implementation of the EU budget. It is considered to be a very strong political statement of the Parliament regarding the spending of the European Commission.

David Siegel, ELNET: “After having monitored the drafting of this report closely from the beginning, we are very happy to see this excellent result. It is a major achievement for Israel’s security, but also for preparing the ground for future coexistence. As this strong and unambiguous wording enables the Parliament to hold the European Commission accountable for their aid to the PA when it comes to Palestinian children’s’ textbooks and preventing EU funding from ending up in the hands of terrorists.”


[1] https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/eu-budget/how-it-works/annual-lifecycle/assessment/parliaments-approval_en