The European Commission’s second-most powerful politician Teresa Ribera on Wednesday slammed her colleagues for failing to address the escalating humanitarian crisis in Gaza, declaring that while Brussels looks the other way, history will judge it harshly.
Ribera, the Commission’s top-ranking vice president, said that “for months, practically every week” she had urged Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to adopt a stronger position against Israel’s military operations and their devastating impact on Gaza’s civilian population.
In a rare public chiding of her colleagues, Ribera lamented that the members of the College of Commissioners were hopelessly deadlocked on the matter, mirroring the deep divisions that exist among EU member countries when it comes to the war in Gaza.
“The Commission is a reflection of national sensibilities,” Ribera said in an interview on Spain’s Cadena Ser radio network. “Institutionally it shouldn’t be so, it is supposed to be independent and represent the interests of the EU, but the truth is that everyone comes with their cultural context, their beliefs.”
Ribera herself hails from Spain, one of the EU’s most vocal critics of Israel’s war in Gaza, and was serving as the country’s deputy prime minister when Madrid recognized Palestinian statehood last year.
The Commission vice president said that EU ambassadors’ refusal to back Brussels’ proposal to curtail Israel’s access to the flagship Horizon Europe research and development program revealed just how divided the bloc was on the issue.
She added that there was “no consensus” within the College of Commissioners regarding stronger measures like the outright suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, or the imposition of sanctions on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel launched its military offensive in October 2023 in retaliation for an attack by Hamas militants that killed more than 1,000 people on Israeli territory. Palestinian health authorities this week said more than 60,000 people had died in Israel’s ground and air campaign in the Gaza Strip, with nearly a third of the dead under the age of 18. According to United Nations-backed global food security experts, Israeli-imposed limits on the flow of aid into the region have resulted in a “worst-case scenario of famine” in the region.
Comparing the suffering of civilians in Gaza to that of Jews imprisoned by the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust, Ribera criticized the EU for idly standing by while “one of the worst humanitarian scandals [in history]” unfolds, adding that “history will not look the other way.”
“We are in a race against time, with people dying of hunger,” she said. “Europe must react and consolidate itself as a political actor … And mobilize the principles that inspired the construction of the European project.”
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