HOWDY. Welcome to EU Influence, where regular readers know we like to lay the irony on pretty thick. Not today. This week’s theme is sensitive: “The Israel lobby.”

ON THE RECORD

“The Brussels bubble is not entirely white. It’s not white when you look at security and cleaning staff. It’s even worse.” 

— College of Europe Rector and former EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini. More on an (incremental) effort to fix this below.

HAMAS ATTACK FALLOUT

STUNNING MOMENT FOR EU-ISRAEL RELATIONS: The Israeli flag was everywhere — projected across the Berlaymont and the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Flying in front of the European Parliament and lighting up the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw. 

‘Watershed moment’: That’s how Matthijs Schüssler put it. He’s the Brussels chief for the European Leadership Network (Elnet), an advocacy organization dedicated to improving Israel’s ties with the Continent. “It’s not business as usual,” he said, adding that the “severity of the atrocities” seems to have spurred “unprecedented” support for Israel.

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GRADUAL DEFROST COMING TO FRUITION? For Schüssler, who’s been on the front lines of Israel advocacy in Brussels since 2019, the outpouring is “surprising, because the amount of support that we are seeing hasn’t been there in this way for a very, very long time.” Yet there have been signs of a gradual thaw for a while now, argued Maya Sion Tzidkiyahu, director of the Israel-Europe Program at the Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies (Mitvim). As Israeli minister of foreign affairs in 2021 and 2022, Yair Lapid made improving relations with Europe a priority, she said. And since then, geopolitical realities have worked in Israel’s favor.

“The Russia-Ukraine war had a big effect,” Sion said, because it helped Europeans better understand Israel and its security concerns. Another plus: “Israel sells arms to EU countries,” she said, noting the recent sale of Israel’s Arrow-3 missile defense system to Germany.

New players: Sion also pointed to a rotation of the diplomatic guard that seems to be improving relations.

— Eli Cohen: Israel’s foreign minister since December 2022, Cohen has been making the rounds, signing a bilateral deal with the U.K. and visiting Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv. He’s also met several times with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell (one of Israel’s top critics in Brussels); the two seem to have a “strange chemistry,” Sion said. 

— Dynamic diplo duo: Haim Regev, a principal negotiator in the Abraham Accords as the foreign ministry’s Middle East chief from 2016 to 2021, is now bringing his professional touch to another sort of hostile territory as the ambassador to the EU (and NATO). He’s already had to help Israel ride out controversy from the Pegasus surveillance scandal, not to mention concerns over Israel’s own democratic backslide. Added bonus: His wife, Sharon, has been very diligent about promoting the Israeli tech industry as a project manager for Elnet, this reporter can attest. 

— Dimiter Tzantchev: A Bulgarian, Tzantchev has been the EU’s envoy to Israel since 2021, and has been more reticent to criticize the government than his predecessor, who had high-profile clashes with Netanyahu’s government. 

Another data point: The EU’s general silence on Israel’s judicial overhaul has been “extremely irritating for the pro-democratic people,” said Sion, whose think tank pushes for a peaceful solution to regional conflicts. More on that debate below.

Palestinians feel it too: Bertrand Heilbronn, president of European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine, said he’d also felt a tip toward Israel in recent years. “I think that many countries have thought that with the Abraham Accords, the Palestinian question could just be ignored,” he said. “Now it is waking up, and bursting up,” he added. “For the moment,” capitals are embracing “the Israel narrative.”

HOW LONG WILL THE WARMING TO ISRAEL LAST? Horrific images from the Hamas attacks are spurring strong emotions, Heilbronn said, and “all the people who are supporting Israel policy take advantage of it to push what they want.”

Get ready for that to change: Elnet’s Schüssler is very cognizant that Israel could go back on the PR defensive very soon. “When we will see, possibly, Israeli troops moving into Gaza, which will most probably be a very, very difficult situation with a lot of casualties,” he predicted. “Then, of course, the question will be: Will this support remain?”

The role of images: “What organizations like Hamas also learned to do very well is use public opinion and news, graphic images, to support their cause,” Schüssler said. Expect Israel to be less reticent to do the same, he said. 

“The natural tendency was often: Okay, we don’t want to show that we are hurt, we want to be strong,” he said. Now, there is “more openness and willingness to actually share the pain and to share the enormous impact of this disaster that’s unfolding.”

Travel planning: Elnet is already at work organizing trips for European lawmakers to visit the sites of the attacks — just as soon as they’re allowed to actually travel there. 

DEMOCRACY ACTIVISTS REGROUP: Sion, for her part, was supposed to be in Brussels Wednesday. A new group, the DemoCrisis Action Network, had planned an event and rally at the European Parliament intended to decry democratic backslide in Israel, Poland and Hungary. 

Original plan: Activists from Poland, Hungary and the Jewish community in Europe and Israel had planned to hold a pro-democracy rally on Place Lux, followed by a series of panel discussions inside the Parliament. Ahead of Poland’s election on Sunday, the idea was to link the Israeli government’s attempted judicial overhaul to efforts by PiS in Poland and Fidesz in Hungary. 

The message: “Across Europe, illiberal leaders are watching the result of the ‘Israeli experiment,’” declared an op-ed published in Israeli, Hungarian, French, Belgian and German papers, penned by DemoCrisis chief Dan Sobovitz along with MEPs Marc Angel, Anne Sinclair, Róża Thun and Tamas Harangozo.

Boiling over: The democracy rally was canceled, changed instead to focus on pushing the EU to do more to free Israeli hostages Organizers said that Israeli participants joining remotely would avoid criticizing the Israeli government — but it didn’t pan out that way, as we reported for Playbook this morning.

Activists planned to gather privately in Brussels this morning to consider the next steps for confronting the Israeli government.

TRANSPARENCY DEPT.

MEET THE FORMER PESTICIDE SALESPERSON FIGHTING TO KILL THE EU PESTICIDE BILL: It may be a cliché, but the worst-kept secret in Brussels is that AGRI is packed with farmers. The committee has consistently pushed to weaken the EU’s Green Deal files while overseeing the spending of a third of the EU’s budget — the Common Agricultural Policy.

Pesticide salesman: My colleagues Bartosz Brzeziński and Paula Andrés introduce us to Franc Bogovič, a Slovenian member of the center-right European People’s Party who lives in a regional park in eastern Slovenia that is protected under EU law, and owns a commercial apple orchard along its fringes. Bogovič is also one of the MEPs leading the charge against the EU’s pesticide reduction plan … even though, for 16 years, he himself sold pesticides.

Rule not the exception: Bogovič is no oddity among the 48 lawmakers on AGRI. Of its members, 11 have declared farming as a secondary activity. Read the full article to understand how AGRI got to be the way it is.

**Leading policymakers have already announced their participation at this year’s POLITICO Live Sustainable Future Week, both as speakers and as guests. Discover what’s in store at this year’s summit and claim your seat today!**

(We return to our regularly scheduled irony from this point forward.)

#BrusselsSoWhite

DIPPING THEIR TOES INTO DIVERSITY EFFORTS: The behemoth consulting agencies BCW, Dentons Global Advisors and FTI are teaming up to sponsor College of Europe tuition for one (1) minority student per year. The move was announced by the rector of the Eurocrat training ground, former EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini on Tuesday. “It means that the college recognizes that there is an issue. The first step toward solutions is normally being aware of the problem,” she said. The InclusivEU scholarship covers the tuition, valued at €29,000, and the agencies will guarantee two paid internships.

Greasing the pipeline: The bloc’s personnel agency EPSO is also conveying how non-white European applicants are welcome in Brussels and doubling down on its engagement with groups representing people from minority backgrounds. But more is needed to address the scale of the problem. The head of external relations at EPSO, Luís F. L. de Amorim, admitted that simply tracking diversity in the EU bubble is a “controversial issue.”

“We tend to find many barriers. Usually, the excuse is personal data protection regulations,” he told the panel on Tuesday. The European Commission confirmed to my colleague Gregorio Sorgi that it does not collect data on the racial and ethnic background of its staff due to data protection rules. But the EU executive did carry out a voluntary survey to measure diversity among its ranks. 

REVOLVING DOOR

BIG PHIL’S BIG HAUL: Ex-Commissioner Phil Hogan is taking in more than €1 million as a lobbyist since being forced to resign for breaking COVID-19 rules, according to his lobbying disclosure. Clients include Visa, Vodafone and JPMorgan. David Cronin had the scoop.

NAVEL GAZING

GOLIATH WINS AGAIN: POLITICO once again came out again on top as the most influential news source in BCW’s annual EU Media Poll, according to results published today. But that upstart The Economist is nipping at our heels. (Both publications were ranked as “most influential” by 74 percent of respondents in this year’s poll, conducted by Savanta, but POLITICO edged our competitor out in a tiebreaker measure.)

LinkedIn love: The geeky professional social media platform came out on top in that category (well, technically it was No. 2, but was pitted against WhatsApp, which we don’t think counts). 

**Dive into the complexities of carbon capture and storage (CCS) at POLITICO Live’s Spotlight “Carbon Capture and Storage: a climate savior or a daunting challenge for industry?” and discuss with our experts whether CSS can be a game-changer for hard-to-decarbonize sectors. Register here!**

INFLUENCERS

AGRI-FOOD

— Klaus Berend has been officially appointed director for food safety, sustainability and innovation at DG SANTE. He’s held the post in an acting capacity since March 2022.

— Giulia Gouet started as a policy officer for agroecology at Slow Food, after previously having worked at Friends of Europe.

CONSULTING & COMMS

— Klym Ahrykov has been promoted to the head of growth at The Right Street.

— Alexis Germon is joining Air France as a flight attendant on long-haul flights, leaving Brussels and his position of a director at Kreab Worldwide.

DIPLOMACY

— Linnea Gualersi joined as a third secretary at Sweden’s Permanent Representation to the EU. She has previously been working with the Swedish government in Sweden.

HEALTH CARE

— Joanna Hasson started as director of healthcare at BCW in Brussels. She previously worked at Melville SPRL.

— Ryan Hunter, formerly with LP Brussels, started working as a senior policy analyst external affairs & strategic alliances EMEA at Johnson & Johnson. 

SUSTAINABILITY

— Julia Staunig has been appointed the managing director of the newly opened Brussels office of Position Green. She previously worked at Teneo.

— Adeline Rochet joined the Corporate Leaders Groups in Europe as program manager, joining from the E3G.

TECH

— Anna Sobczak has been promoted to policy coordinator for the Strategic Energy Technology Plan at the digitalization, competitiveness, research and innovation unit at the European Commission.

TRADE

— María Paula Barbosa Rodríguez started working as an international trade lawyer at DLA Piper‘s Brussels office. She used to work at Gide Loyrette Nouel.

THANKS TO: Gregorio Sorgi, Bartosz Brzeziński, Paula Andrés and especially Ketrin Jochecová; web producer Lola Boom and my editor Sonya Diehn.

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