EU racism is fuelling injustice, from Brussels to Gaza and Tehran 

The internal is external. The EU’s failure to tackle rising racism at home is closely connected to its complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and tacit approval of illegal US-Israeli strikes on Iran.

For most of us this is a no-brainer. 

This week’s moral failure by EU foreign ministers to immediately suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement makes it even easier to connect the dots between what Europe does inside its borders and what it does outside — and vice-versa.

Dig only a little and it is clear: the EU’s foreign, trade and development dealings with the Global South are more often than not a reflection of Europe’s unresolved bias and prejudice towards its own black, brown and Muslim citizens.

The point was made recently by Carlos Lopes, former executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa when he said EU dealings with Africa were embedded in “colonial attitudes of superiority”.

And Indonesia’s former president Joko Widodo has been equally vocal in demanding that EU relations with southeast Asia must be based on equality, not coercion.

Making such a link, however, is still quasi-sacrilege in “Brussels So White” and in most national capitals where few question the EU’s self-identification as a global champion for equality.