EU becomes Israel’s largest trading partner overtaking US; China, India third and fourth

New Delhi: A report reveals that one-third of Israel’s trade in goods in 2024 was with the European Union outshining the Jewish country’s main backer the US.

The report titled “Economic sanctions now: the EU is Israel’s largest investor” by SOMO, the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations, put this trade volume at €42.6 billion, which is significantly higher than Israel’s €31.6 billion trade with the US, Maktoobmedia.com reported. 

Pointing to changing scenario of the trade, the report said the EU is ‘the main engine of Israel’s economy of genocide,’ replacing the US, to provide the Jewish state with ‘crucial revenue and resources’ to help it continue with the illegal occupation and attack on the Palestinian people.

Other major forces in the region China and India are respectively Israel’s third and fourth largest trading partners.

The report comes just as the foreign ministers of European Union, meeting in Brussels to discuss sanctions on Israel, failed to announce a unanimous agreement on it.

This is despite an EU report previously found Israel as breaching Article 2 of the Israel-EU Association Agreement pressing for respecting human rights and democratic principles.

Taken together as a bloc, European Union has emerged as the largest of the five biggest investors in Israel in 2023.

The report points, citing UNCTAD’s 2025 World Investment Report, that Israel’s foreign direct investment (FDI) has risen in 2024.

China, Canada, and Switzerland have emerged as the country’s the largest foreign investors after the European Union and the United States.

However, considering the spike in EU’ trade with Israel, the report said: ‘This means that the EU is the key supplier of both goods and resources to Israel, as well as Israel’s biggest market in terms of sales. That makes the free trade provisions included in the EU-Israel Association Agreement crucial for Israel’s economy, and suspending them could have a tremendous impact.’

Holding the EU complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the report points out that between 2023 and 2024, just as the genocide happening, total trade in goods between the EU and Israel rose by one billion euros.