What if Israel Joined the European Union?

Canada’s New Push toward Europe Raises an Unexpected Question : Could Israel one day Become Part of the European Project? 

David Lekaj 

 

 

Mark Carney’s push for a deeper relationship between Canada and the European Union first caught my attention because it seemed to challenge one of the assumptions we rarely question: that European integration must necessarily follow geography. That assumption looks a little less certain now. On September 16, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed opening the door for Canada to become the EU’s first “associate member”, while Carney has been pushing for a much broader relationship between Canada and Europe. The areas under discussion include defence, critical minerals, artificial intelligence and computing, energy, space, research and digital cooperation.

Canada is, of course, on the other side of the Atlantic. It has its own political system, currency and foreign policy, and nobody would describe it as a European country in the conventional geographical sense. Yet the discussion taking place now is less about where Canada sits on a map than about how closely it can be connected to Europe economically, technologically and strategically.

 That raises another question. If Europe can imagine a much deeper institutional relationship with Canada, why should we consider the question of Israel entirely off the table?

 

I am not suggesting that Israel is about to join the European Union, nor that membership should be considered on the basis of history, religion or political sympathy. I am asking whether, over a sufficiently long horizon, Israel could become a serious candidate for some form of European integration, potentially even membership. It is a thought experiment, but one that may tell us something about how the meaning of Europe itself is changing.

The EU has never been simply a geographical project. Its political identity has always extended beyond a narrow map of continental Europe. Cyprus is perhaps the clearest example. It is the Union’s southeastern frontier and geographically closer to the Middle East than much of mainland Europe, yet it has been a member since 2004. Cyprus itself describes its position as being at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa.

 

This makes the simplest objection to Israel a little less straightforward. Israel is in the Middle East, therefore it cannot be European. Geography obviously matters, but it has never been the only way in which Europe has defined itself. The EU treaties allow a European state that respects the Union’s values to apply for membership, while the Copenhagen criteria place democracy, the rule of law, human rights, protection of minorities and a functioning market economy at the centre of the accession process. The more interesting question, then, is not simply where Israel sits on a map, but what we mean by a European state in the twenty-first century.

Israel is not starting from zero. The EU and Israel have had an Association Agreement since 2000, providing the institutional framework for political dialogue and economic cooperation. The EU is Israel’s largest trading partner, accounting for 31.7% of Israel’s trade in goods in 2025. Israel is also associated with Horizon Europe, allowing Israeli institutions to participate in the EU’s research and innovation programme.

 There is already a substantial degree of integration between the two sides. It does not make Israel European, but it means that the relationship is much more developed than that between Europe and a distant economic outsider. In science and technology in particular, the connections are extensive, and they sit naturally alongside Europe’s own efforts to strengthen its position in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, biotechnology, medical research, water management, agriculture, semiconductors and other advanced technologies.

The economic side of the question is equally worth considering. Israel is a developed, high-income economy whose level of output per person is now remarkably close to that of Germany. World Bank-derived 2025 figures put GDP per capita at approximately $60,337 in Israel and $60,496 in Germany.

The significance of this is not that GDP per capita somehow makes a country European. It simply means that Israel would enter any discussion about deeper European integration from an economic position comparable with that of some of the Union’s most advanced economies. Its economy has developed considerable depth in technology and other knowledge-intensive sectors, while its universities, research institutions and agricultural industries are connected to international networks well beyond the region.

 The potential gains would also run in both directions. Israel would gain access to a much larger integrated market and institutional framework, while Europe would gain a closer relationship with an innovation economy on its southeastern edge, with capabilities that complement areas in which Europe is itself trying to build greater capacity.

The Mediterranean adds another dimension. The Eastern Mediterranean sits at the intersection of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and Israel is already part of a wider regional energy geography involving Cyprus, Egypt and Greece. If Europe spends the coming decades diversifying energy supplies, strengthening infrastructure and reducing strategic dependence on individual external suppliers, the Eastern Mediterranean is likely to become more important.

 Israel’s offshore gas resources are only one part of that picture. The larger question concerns the infrastructure connecting the region: electricity, gas, ports, subsea cables, digital infrastructure, data centres and potentially new forms of energy. From that perspective, Israel could gradually become less of a peripheral country on Europe’s map and more of a southern node in a wider European-Mediterranean network. Cyprus already occupies part of that role.

These relationships become more interesting when viewed from Europe rather than from Israel alone. Canada is connected to the Arctic and North Atlantic. Ukraine is directly connected to Europe’s eastern security environment. Israel sits at the intersection of the Eastern Mediterranean and the wider Middle East. Each relationship raises a different question about how Europe might organise its economic, technological and security interests beyond the traditional boundaries of the Union.

There is an interesting intellectual precedent here. In The Grand Chessboard, published in 1997, Zbigniew Brzezinski described Ukraine as a geopolitical pivot because its independence fundamentally affected Russia’s position in Eurasia. The language belongs to a different geopolitical era, but the underlying point about geography remains relevant: countries do not have to be large to occupy a position that matters disproportionately to the strategic balance around them.

The cultural question is perhaps more interesting than it first appears. It would be easy to reduce it to geography or religion, but the historical relationship between Europe and the land of Israel runs much deeper. Europe became what it is through a long and complicated interaction between the classical heritage of Greece and Rome, Judaism and Christianity. The Roman Empire itself once stretched across much of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, making the lands of Judea and Galilee part of the same political world that shaped the foundations of European civilisation. Christianity emerged in the eastern Mediterranean, in the land of ancient Judea and Galilee, and went on to shape European civilisation for almost two millennia. The intellectual, moral and political history of Europe cannot be separated from that inheritance. 

This matters because many of the principles Europeans now regard as fundamental, including the dignity of the individual, the idea of universal human worth, the moral limits of political power and the obligation to protect the weak, developed within a civilisation profoundly shaped by Christianity. Modern democracy, human rights and the rule of law have multiple intellectual and historical sources, and it would be simplistic to attribute them exclusively to Christianity. At the same time, it would be equally difficult to understand the European political tradition without recognising the formative role Christianity played in its development.

The European Union itself is a secular political institution, but being secular does not mean being historically or culturally detached from the civilisation that produced it. The Union’s commitment to democracy, human rights, pluralism and the rule of law belongs to a much longer European tradition, one profoundly shaped by Christian ideas about human dignity, moral responsibility and the limits of political power, even though those principles are now expressed in universal and secular terms.

Seen from that perspective, Israel presents an unusual case. It is a modern Western democracy rooted in the Middle East, while its historical and cultural relationship with Europe is inseparable from the Jewish and Christian traditions that helped shape European civilisation itself. Israel is not European simply because Christianity was born there, nor because a significant part of its population has European family origins. The more substantial point is that Israel sits at an unusual intersection: geographically Middle Eastern, culturally and institutionally deeply connected to the West, and historically linked to one of the central sources of Europe’s own civilisational identity.

The demographic picture adds another layer to this. A large share of Israel’s Jewish population has family origins in Europe, while many others descend from communities originating in the Middle East and North Africa. Israel itself is a diverse society that includes a substantial Arab population. The point is not that Israelis are somehow Europeans by ancestry. It is that Israel has developed within a distinctly Western institutional, scientific, economic and cultural environment while remaining deeply rooted in the Middle East.

There is, however, an obvious problem with the idea, and it cannot be ignored. EU membership is not simply a commercial arrangement. The accession criteria require stable democratic institutions, the rule of law, protection of human rights and minorities, a functioning market economy, and the ability to adopt and implement the EU acquis. Accession also requires agreement among the existing member states and ratification of the accession treaty.

These are not peripheral issues, and they cannot simply be set aside because Israel is technologically advanced or economically attractive to Europe. If such a discussion ever takes place, the same institutional standards would have to apply to Israel as to any other prospective member.

Full EU membership may be too distant to be useful as an immediate proposition. But there is a large space between today’s relationship and membership, and that is where Canada’s initiative becomes particularly interesting. A country can seek much deeper integration in trade, research, defence, investment, energy, education and mobility without immediately becoming a full member of the Union. Canada is now exploring how far such a relationship could go, while the EU is proposing to open the door to a new associate-member relationship that does not currently exist in EU law.

Israel is already unusually close to Europe in several of these fields. That does not mean that membership is the logical next step. It does, however, raise the possibility that Europe could eventually develop more flexible forms of association for countries that are closely connected to the European system but do not fit neatly within its traditional geography.

I would be lying if I said I did not find the idea appealing. But being drawn to an idea is not the same as overlooking the questions that stand in its way. Those questions are part of the story, and I would rather put them on the table and let the reader decide how far the argument can reasonably be taken.

What interests me more is not predicting whether Israel will ever become a member, but what this discussion tells us about the European project itself.

That question has become less theoretical in recent days. In her State of the Union address, Ursula von der Leyen called for a European Security Council involving partners such as Canada, Norway, Ukraine and the United Kingdom, while also proposing a new European security strategy and an Emergency Security Protocol. At the same time, she proposed opening the door for Canada to become the EU’s first associate member.

These are very different relationships, and they should not be forced into a single model. But taken together, they point to something worth watching. Europe is increasingly having to define its strategic interests beyond the territory formally contained within the Union.

Perhaps that is where the original question becomes more interesting. The issue is not simply whether Israel is European. It is whether the European project itself is gradually becoming something that cannot be defined by geography alone.

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David Lekaj writes on Eurasian markets, geopolitical realignment, and strategic competition. Subscribe: davidlekaj.substack.com