Jerusalem, December 2, 2005 – “The European leadership funding model” which has been developed by the European Coalition for Israel and was first introduced at the Annual conference in Brussels in September is continuing to generate a positive interest in the European Union. During a four day official visit to Israel last week by the European Parliament Delegation to the Knesset, a more extensive follow up version of the funding model was presented at a breakfast briefing in Hotel King David. At the meeting the author of the paper, Dr Jürgen Bühler, spoke about the need for the European Union to ensure that the funds which are allocated to the Palestinian Authorities are spent correctly and that the mismanagement from the previous years is stopped. Last week the paper was also presented to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the British House of Commons on their fact finding mission to Israel and Saudi-Arabia.

“This dual approach of informing both the relevant delegation of the European Parliament and the Foreign Affairs Committee of a national parliament, in this case the EU-presidency, is to be an effective working method”, said executive director Rijk van Dam  in Jerusalem where he was accompanying the European parliament delegation on their visit. “This way the coalition can work effectively together with the partner organizations in the various member states ” said Van Dam who opened the breakfast briefing at Hotel King David.

In the European leadership funding model the Coalition points out that the European Union and its member states represents the largest single donor bloc financing the Palestinian Authority and its affiliated institutions. Dr Bühler believes that European taxpayers’ money was, and probably still is, being channeled to the PA and its affiliates in ways which contradict core EU principles, contributing to the prevailing culture of corruption and incitement whilst failing to address the underlying causes of Palestinian poverty. He notes recent efforts by the Commission to begin address many of the issues outlined in the paper and proposes an alternative funding model, which he believes is more in line with the interests and values of the European Union as a whole.

The proposal has previously been submitted to a formal European Commission consultation on the financing of terrorism where it has raised a similar interest. At Dr Bühler´s presentation at King David, the delegation’s vice-chair Monica Benova invited him to come back to Brussels to address the delegation of the European Parliament on the issue.

“By engaging the institutions of the European Union in a direct but constructive way we can have a positive influence on EU-Israeli relations”, says Bühler. He believes the European leadership funding model is one concrete way of helping the European Union achieve its goals in an open and transparent way.