European Parliament Adopts Economic Accord with Israel

The legislative branch of the European Union has given its formal approval to a new association agreement signed last November by Israel and the union’s 15 member states.

The new accord, which was approved Feb. 29 by the European Parliament, replaces a 1975 trade and cooperation agreement between Israel and what was then known as the Common Market.

Ratified in a 265-2 vote with three abstentions, the accord will grant Israel special status to participate in the union’s scientific and technological research-and-development projects.

Israel’s new ambassador to the European Union, Efraim Halevy, welcomed the Parliament’s vote, calling it “a very important step for the rapprochement between Israel and Europe.”

The accord, which will go into effect next January, will also provide for expanded free trade between Israel and the 15 nations comprising the European economic bloc.

Israel hopes that the new accord will help lessen Israel’s growing trade imbalance with the European Union, which stood at some $7.6 billion last year.

The European Union is Israel’s main trading partner, receiving some 35 percent of Israel’s total exports.

The accord, which also calls for a high-level E.U.-Israeli political dialogue, is part of an E.U. strategy to create a zone of stability and a vast Mediterranean free-trade area by 2010.

The European Union signed economic accords last year with Tunisia and Morocco.

The European Commission, the E.U.’s executive body, is planning to start discussions for forging an association accord with Syria, said Hans Van den Broek, the European commissioner in charge of external affairs.

But, he told the European Parliament last week, before the commission went beyond the exploratory stage with Syria, it wanted to see how the Mideast peace process developed and “what contribution Syria intends to make” to it.