Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič, in a written answer on 16 July 2026, pushed back against MEPs' calls to link mislabelling of products from Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories (OPTs) to the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement. The answer, responding to a question co-signed by 68 MEPs from S&D, Greens/EFA, The Left, Renew, and NI groups, clarifies that customs treatment and consumer labelling are governed by separate legal frameworks, and that mislabelling alone does not prove fraudulent access to preferential tariffs.
Šefčovič explained that entitlement to preferential treatment under the EU-Israel Association Agreement is determined by the Protocol on Origin and the 2005 Technical Arrangement, which rely on proofs of origin rather than product labels. He noted that Regulation 1169/2011 on food information makes origin labelling mandatory only for certain products or when omission would be misleading, and that enforcement falls on food business operators and national food authorities, not customs. For products covered by marketing standards under Regulation 1308/2013, non-compliant goods must be brought into conformity before marketing; fraudulent practices can trigger official controls and fraud notifications under Regulation 2017/625 and Implementing Regulation 2019/1715.
On the second question, Šefčovič confirmed that the Customs Surveillance system cannot be used to flag settlement-origin goods in daily notifications. On the third, he rejected the premise that mislabelling necessarily implies preferential tariff abuse, stating that the two issues are procedurally distinct. The answer offers no concrete new measures, instead reiterating existing mechanisms and deflecting calls for trade agreement suspension. Institutional follow-up is unlikely in the short term, as the Commission signals no intention to revise customs practices or the Technical Arrangement. The answer leaves MEPs seeking stronger differentiation of settlement products without a clear path forward.