Brussels, 18/07/2006
{However, the European Union is not playing as full a part as it could in working towards a peaceful solution. The EU is Israel's largest trade partner and shares a European Neighbourhood Policy Action Plan with Israel with a high level of ambition.
The EU is also the largest donor to the Palestinians, and I welcome the latest disbursements to alleviate the conditions in Gaza announced yesterday. All this should ensure the EU's influence on the parties. But divided views in the Council and the absence of the institutional presence that Javier Solana would have enjoyed had the Constitutional Treaty been in force, have led once more to a timid response.
This insistence on intergovernmentalism in foreign policy will also diminish Europe's potential weight in the United Nations processes that must be the basis for a just solution”.}