TIMES OF ISRAEL
Greece to defy EU order on labeling settlement goods
by Raphael Ahren
November 30, 2015

A day after Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras visited Jerusalem, his foreign minister Nikos Kotzias sent a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, informing him of the opposition by Athens to the EU guidelines, The Times of Israel has learned. According to guidelines published earlier this month by the European Commission, goods manufactured over the pre-1967 lines may not state that they were “Made in Israel.” Rather, they should be labeled with a formulation such as “Product from the West Bank (Israeli settlements),” the Commission suggested. “The European Commission expects all member states to comply with EU legislation,” an official in the union’s delegation to Israel told The Times of Israel last week. Another European country, however, has already declared its intention to defy Brussels’s instructions on labeling. “We do not support that decision,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó declared earlier this month at an event of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations. READ MORE