Launching an ECI in a politically charged context: what organisers can learn from the ‘Justice for Palestine’ ECI

Over the past two years, Europe has seen numerous pro-Palestine demonstrations, but in the eyes of many, they haven’t led to meaningful government action. Aiming at EU policy change, the European Left Alliance has taken on the challenge to turn citizens’ voices into a European citizens’ initiative with a clear goal: the full suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.

The ceasefire in Gaza was declared in October 2025, but the organisers say human rights abuses have not ended. This is why in January 2026 they launched signature collection for the ‘Demand the full suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement in view of Israel’s violations of human rights’ (‘Justice for Palestine’ ECI), to sustain political momentum around what they describe as Israel’s crimes in Gaza, and to push EU institutions to act. While supported by a political party, organisers say the campaign is citizen-driven. The numbers speak for themselves: as of February 20, just over a month after the start of signature collection, over 460 000 signatures had already been collected. 

 “While we’re a party working with national parties in various countries, this initiative is beyond us. It’s a movement.” 

“We define it as a grassroots campaign built by everyone who's concerned about the Palestinian cause, about the EU's respect to human rights and international law,” says Tamam Abusalama, the European Left Alliance's campaign and communications strategist, who is coordinating the ECI.

How signature collection campaign works in practice

In practice, the organisers work on multiple fronts. The hybrid campaign has a strong national element, which is spearheaded by the alliance’s national parties in nine EU Member States. The Brussels campaign HQ coordinates events and social media. Signature collection is open to every European citizen who cares about the Palestinian cause. This inclusive approach has encouraged broad participation and has already led the campaign to meet the minimum signature thresholds in eight countries.

“We are a European party, so we are quite lucky in already having a possibility to rely on national partners in different EU Member States, and that's at the core of our structure,”, says Stefano Spadaro, programme and communications lead at the European Left Alliance. “But our campaign goes beyond that. We are in close contact with civil society at the European level and at the national level with trade unions and collectives.”

Online, the organisers in Brussels run an umbrella campaign through a central Instagram account and a dedicated website. They are working on expanding to other platforms.

The key feature of online campaigning is that anyone can join the initiative. To enable this, the initiative’s website allows anyone to download, print out and disseminate the campaign stickers and flyers.

See also:

• How to organise a campaign
• How to collect signatures

For the organisers, both elements of the campaign are necessary. An old school campaign, as Spadaro calls it, is key for connecting with the citizens and gathering real momentum. However, digital activism is also indispensable, as previous ECIs have repeatedly shown that getting the critical mass of more than 1 million signatures heavily depends on online engagement. 

“The citizens themselves are very much engaged with us digitally and on the ground,”, says Abusalama. “What makes the campaign very successful so far is that we don’t work only on the political level. We also work with civil society organisations, with collectives, with social movements, with trade unions. We really work with people from all their diverse backgrounds.”

Bridging politics and citizen action 

The ECI is campaigning for the suspension of the EU–Israel Association Agreement, which governs the relationship and establishes a free trade area. Suspending the agreement would restrict Israel’s access to the EU market, its largest trading partner. The organisers say this move would send a strong political message to European citizens and the international community about the EU’s commitment to human rights and international law. They add that such a step is necessary to pressure Israel to end what they call its illegal occupation and to comply with international law.

In September 2025, the European Commission put forward a proposal to suspend certain trade-related provisions of the agreement. The ‘ECI Justice for Palestine’ now calls on the Commission to put forward to the Council a proposal for the full suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.

“We put forward this initiative because we listened to the movements, organisations and activists in the streets and squares all around the EU. We must increasingly bridge between political participation and citizens’ participation, only then can our democracies thrive,” says Malin Björk, co-chair of the European Left Alliance.

And the timing for the initiative which kicked off last month is key, the organisers say. The organisers underline that despite the ceasefire in Gaza, atrocities continue. Yet, they fear that with the European public fatigued and frustrated with their governments’ lack of action, the cause may be  slowly slipping out of the public eye. “We were afraid that the momentum would be going down, but the systematic human rights violations in Palestine still are ongoing and people in Europe do care. So, we wanted to keep the momentum going too,”, says Abusalama.

The signature collection started off great, but the organisers know this is only the beginning. They will have to keep pushing to keep the momentum going, despite the public’s growing fatigue. “It's a work in progress. We will continue working and scaling up the campaign,”, says Spadaro. “We are at over 460,000 [signatures], but it's not yet 1 million.”