Can the EU Reform the Palestinian Authority?

When 17^th century political commentator Jonathan Swift noted that “There’s none so blind as they that won’t see,” he probably did not realize that he was actually prophesying the 21^st century approach of the European Union (EU) toward the Palestinian Authority (PA).

On June 23, 2025, as the war with Iran raged, the EU announced¹ that it was allocating €202 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in the Near East (UNRWA) and the PA. The announcement clarified that “€150 million have been allocated to support the PA in ensuring the delivery of key public services, including the payment of salaries of teachers, civil servants and healthcare workers,” while the remaining €52 million was allocated to UNRWA.

The digital paper-trail underlying the EU contribution to the PA leads, initially to a €1.6 billion “multiannual Comprehensive Support Programme,”² to be distributed by the EU during the period of 2025 to 2027. Closer inspection reveals that the entire program is predicated on a July 2024 “Letter of Intent”³ signed between the PA and the EU Commission.

The letter of intent spells out the quid-pro-quo the EU expected to see from the PA in return for its additional investment.

“The Palestinian Authority commits to undertake the necessary substantial and credible reforms, with support from the international community. These reforms aim at establishing a democratic, transparent, efficient, and sustainable governance system by the Palestinian Authority. It also aims to ensure budgetary sustainability and transparency; strengthen financial sector stability; promote economic resilience and improve public sector efficiency and accountability, including through modernizing institutions, strengthening the rule of law, reforming the social security system, based on objective and needs related parameters, the education curriculum as well as the wage bill reform and fight against corruption.”

The commitments made by the PA expose the harsh reality of the failed EU support for the PA until now.

PA Democracy

The EU aid tracker shows that from 2011 through 2023, the EU donated hundreds of millions of euros to the PA to establish functioning democratic institutions. The goal was so substantial that the 2017-2020 EU “Joint Strategy in Support of Palestine,”⁴ defined the goal as one of the EU’s “non-negotiable principles.”

Thus, demanding that the PA show “substantial and credible reform” to create “a democratic, transparent, efficient, and sustainable governance system,” is, in truth, recognition that despite the aid already given by the EU to the PA, the result is abysmal.

PA law requires elections for the position of PA chairman to be held every four years, and that an incumbent can only run for one additional four-year term. Law aside, the PA has not held elections for the position since 2005. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is now in his 21^st year of his first four-year term.

Similarly, while PA law requires elections for the PA parliament also be held every four years, the last PA elections were held in 2006. At Abbas’s demand, Hamas, an internationally designated terror organization, was not only allowed to participate, but subsequently won 74 of the 132 parliamentary seats. In December 2018, Abbas decided⁵ to dissolve the parliament – which had not functioned for over a decade – promising new elections “within six months.” Abbas eventually decided to hold the elections in May 2021, but cancelled them when he realized that Hamas would win again.

In the aftermath of the October 7, 2023, massacre, PA elections for both the position of chairman and the parliament, which would require the participation of the Gazans, have never been more distant.

The PA has been devoid of any semblance of democracy for almost two decades and, realistically, there is little to no prospect of the PA ever truly adopting democratic principles. Nonetheless, it would seem that the EU is still willing to swallow the PA’s empty commitment to establish the elusive “democratic, transparent, efficient, and sustainable governance system.” Moreover, the EU is still willing to provide the PA with more and more funds to achieve this goal.

Before providing the PA with more funds to achieve a goal it has failed to meet for two decades, perhaps, in the name of “transparency,” the EU should ask the PA what happened to all the aid it has already received to promote this goal.

Similar to the past, if the EU does not truly demand PA accountability and demand that the PA meet concrete benchmarks before receiving the funds, in another two decades the EU will again look back and ask what happened to all the aid it provided to the PA to promote Palestinian democracy.

PA Budgetary Sustainability and Transparency

As part of the letter of intent, the EU sufficed with demanding that the PA publish a “National Budget in the format of Citizen Budget.”

The “Citizen Budget” published by the PA is a far stretch from providing any semblance of “transparency.” So why did the EU suffice with this superficial publication, instead of demanding that the PA actually publish its full budget?

The answer is simple.

While being one of the largest, if not the largest, per capita recipient of foreign aid, the last time the PA published a full budget was in 2018. Scrutiny of that budget⁶ showed that for that year, the PA allocated no less than NIS 550 million to fund its terror reward payments to terrorist prisoners and released prisoners, and another NIS 687 million to fund its terror reward payments to injured terrorists and to the families of dead terrorists.

Having been thoroughly exposed, it is clear why the PA would want to conceal its full budget. Why the EU agrees to this fraud and allows the PA to avoid rudimentary transparency is unclear.

Strengthening the Rule of Law

Despite having had over three decades and having received hundreds of millions of dollars/euros, the PA has colossally failed to establish a functioning judiciary. Since its creation, the PA judiciary has always been dogged by corruption⁷ and even suffered from a situation in which court rulings are sometimes ignored by the PA and its security forces.⁸ 

The already compromised judiciary was further weakened in 2016 when Abbas quietly established a constitutional court and packed it with jurists from his Fatah party.⁹ It was this court that Abbas used in 2018 to dissolve the parliament.

Unsatisfied with the courts he had already invented, in 2022, Abbas unabashedly removed any last semblance of rule of law by establishing a Supreme Council of Judicial Bodies and Authorities, which he heads.

Commenting on the decision, The Coalition for Accountability and Integrity (AMAN), that partners, among others with the EU, noted¹⁰ that the “decree was a blatant violation of the Palestinian Basic Law. It also ignored the principles contained in the Declaration of Independence by compromising the concept of a democratic state, the principle of the rule of law and the separation of powers, as well as kept government officials free of judicial control.”

Including the need for “strengthening the rule of law” as part of the PA’s commitments for reform is certainly critical for building a functioning Palestinian governance system. However, believing that the PA, under the dictatorial rule of Abbas and the rest of his Fatah cronies, has either the will or ability to create a functioning judiciary is not just naive, but rather willful self-delusion.

Reforming the Education Curriculum

Over the years, the PA educational curriculum has been thoroughly analyzed by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se).¹¹

Critically, IMPACT-Se’s review of the 2020–21 Palestinian School Curriculum for Grades 1–12, found that the “textbooks remain openly antisemitic and continue to encourage violence, jihad and martyrdom while peace is still not taught as preferable or even possible.” The report¹² added that “Jews and Israel are vilified to a greater extent than in previous curricula and antisemitism is more prevalent throughout.”

Soon after the publication of IMPACT-Se’s report, an EU-commissioned report of the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research found¹³ the PA books to have antisemitic content; present Palestinian violence and terror against Israelis as part of a “heroic struggle”; and deny the legitimacy of Israel’s existence through maps that erase Israel and label the entire area “Palestine.”

While the EU demanded that the PA implement curricula reform, then-PA Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh told then-EU Commissioner for Neighborhood and Enlargement Olivér Várhelyi that the PA opposes “having conditions placed on the European aid and want to preserve true partnership based on respect and cooperation, and not on conditions.”¹⁴

The disagreements between the EU and the PA even led to a temporary freeze on EU aid to the PA. Continuing the freeze in March 2022, the EU Parliament’s Budgetary Control Committee adopted a resolution¹⁵ in which it noted that it:

“Deplores that problematic and hateful material in Palestinian school textbooks has still not been removed and is concerned about the continued failure to act effectively against hate speech and violence in school textbooks and especially in the newly created study cards; reiterates its position that all textbooks and materials supported by EU Funds which are used in schools must be in line with UNESCO standards of peace, tolerance, co-existence and non-violence; moreover, insists that salaries of teachers and education sector civil servants that are financed from Union funds such as PEGASE be used for drafting and teaching curricula which reflect the UNESCO standards of peace, tolerance, coexistence, and non-violence, as was decided upon by Union education ministers in Paris on 17 March 2015; and European Parliament decisions on discharge in respect of the implementation of the general budget of the European Union for the financial years 2016, 2018 and 2019; requests therefore the Commission to closely scrutinizes that Palestinian Authority and relevant experts to modify the curriculum expeditiously.”

Astonishingly, while it was Várhelyi who led the EU criticism of the PA educational curriculum it 2022, it is now the same Várhelyi who signed the “Letter of Intent” on behalf of the EU – effectively endorsing vague and unfulfilled promises by the PA to reform a curriculum that has only grown more problematic since.

What about the PA’s “Pay-for-Slay” Policy?

At first glance, an innocent reader may note the glaring omission from the EU-PA “Letter of Intent” of any reference to the PA’s “Pay-for-Slay” policy.¹⁶ While these payments clearly promote, incentivize, and reward participation in terror, shamefully, the EU program for reforming the PA lacked any reference to the abolishment of this policy.

However, closer scrutiny of the document reveals a potentially worrying scenario.

As noted above, the July 2024 “Letter of Intent” includes the PA commitment to “reforming the social security system, based on objective and needs related parameters.”

In February 2025, Abbas issued yet another “Law by Decree.” In an attempt to again deceive the international community,¹⁷ in the decree, Abbas transferred the embattled “Pay-for-Slay” payments from the PA-PLO institutions to the relatively newly established PA social security system.

Considering the timeline of the PA commitment to the EU, the decree issued by Abbas, and the current EU decision to funnel €150 million into the coffers of the PA, cynics may deduct that the EU was instrumental in advising the PA how to try to conceal the “Pay-for-Slay” payments and deceive the world.

Conclusion

Clearly, in addition to the willful blindness expressed by SWIFT, when it comes to the PA, it would seem that the EU has another foundational principle: No matter how broken the product is, the solution is just to throw more and more money at the PA, even in the knowledge that nothing will change.

The bottom line is that no matter how much the EU tries to present its aid to the PA as leverage for reform, the truth is that the PA, apparently correctly, interprets EU willful blindness as accepting and even condoning the PA’s actions, policies, and outright deception.

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Notes