Non-State Actors in EU Foreign Policy-Making Towards Israel and Palestine: Playing a Consensual Role?

This paper will focus on the role of non-state actors (NSAs), such as business groups, NGOs, solidarity movements and think tanks, in EU foreign policy making, with a special emphasis on EU foreign policy towards Israel and Palestine. While NSAs at the national level tend to adopt an adversarial attitude and frame their discourse in ideological terms, NSAs lobbying the EU have a different approach. They play a more consensual role, which does not challenge the EU’s actorness and policies towards Israel and Palestine. In addition, the more NSAs frame their arguments in technical or legal terms, the more significant the role they play in EU foreign policy-making. This argument is tested in the case of the approval of the Agreement on Conformity Assessment and Acceptance (ACAA) of Industrial Products, a trade agreement between the EU and Israel. This case study is an interesting example that shows the different roles (ranging from consensual to adversarial) that NSAs play. It also represents an example in which different NSAs relied on a wide range of frames, with the technical and legal arguments being particularly important in providing an alternative lens to look at and understand the situation linked to the ACAA.