THE HEMICYCLE
A textbook budget. Budgets are bit like most European Commissioners: boring but (generally) important. We’re all going to be hearing a lot about the next MFF in the coming months, but before they get down to the nitty gritty, MEPs take off the gloves for a bit of ideological wrestling over the 2026 budget. Come Monday, MEPs will be debating the hot-button issue of whether Palestinian textbooks should be eligible for funding.
Teaching terrorism? The textbooks in question are handed out to Gazan students by the Palestinian Authority, which is deeply dependent on EU aid – on average some €300 million annually over the last four years, some of which helps fund the purchase of books that casually mix grammar lessons with calls to violence.
Counting ‘martyrs’. History teaches us that antisemitism is a ‘false claim’ to justify the ‘colonisation’ of Palestine – at least according to the PA’s History, Vol. 1, Grade 11. Elsewhere, the sentence “Jihad is one of the gates of Paradise” offers a literal textbook example of using Inflectional Suffixes. Oh, and while you’re at it, please calculate the average number of ‘martyrs’ killed by Israel in each year between 1994 and 2015, would you?
‘Hatred and violence’. IMPACT-se, an Israeli- and UK-based non-profit that checks curricula for extremist content, recently released a new report on the EU-funded textbooks, concluding that shows that “these newly created materials contain antisemitic content that encourages students to acts of violence, justified on both nationalistic and religious grounds.” The group said that the curricula “incite hatred and violence’. Previous IMPACT-se reports have seen Parliament freeze funding for the PA.
Follow the money. Moritz Körner – a German MEP from the Renew Europe group and part of the EP’s Israel relations delegation – has been on a crusade to suspend the flow of European public money to fund antisemitism. During Renew’s group meeting on Wednesday, he made another push to get support for an amendment to the EU Parliament’s resolution on political guidelines for the budget. It culminated in a bit of a spat, Euractiv has learned.
In Moritz’ corner: his Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the German Free Voters, who supported an amendment that effectively calls for making EU money conditional “on the removal of antisemitic content from Palestinian schoolbooks”.
On the other side: mostly everyone else, who loathed “Moritz’ tricks” to reopen a file that Renew had already closed without additions that may make it too controversial to pass.
‘Freedom fighters’. “It doesn’t make sense to talk about school books right now, all the schools have been bombed,” one source familiar with the matter said. As per one source, Hamas were intermittently branded as “fighting for freedom” during the meeting, though others present denied this.
Renew Europe is divided along national lines (again) – a recurring issue in a group that unites profligate French MEPs and frugal Germans, progressive Scandinavians and conservative Germans.
Trouble ahead: Taking the circus to plenary in Strasbourg, where the European Parliament will vote on the budget, next week is shaping up to be a showdown over Gaza in the EU’s lower chamber.
Man on a mission. Despite opposition from his own group, Körner got the necessary 35 signatures to table the amendment for all his 719 colleagues to vote on.
Dropping the big one. Meanwhile, centre-right lawmakers have tabled another amendment, that calls to pull aid from the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), a move that would make the textbook flap look like child’s play.
Parliament votes on the 2026 budget on Wednesday.
