Upholding International Law as a Public Interest: Case T-482/25 Association of Jurists for Respect for International Law (JURDI) v Council and Commission

[Eva Kassoti is a senior researcher in EU and international law at T.M.C. Asser Institute, and academic co-ordinator of CLEER]

By its order of 5 September 2025, the General Court (GC) of the Court of Justice of The European Union dismissed an action brought by the Association of Jurists for Respect for International Law (JURDI) against the Council and the Commission alleging that their inaction in response to violations of international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) constitutes an unlawful omission under EU law. This is the first time that an action on the basis of the procedure under Art. 265 TFEU was brought against the EU institutions for their inaction concerning Israel’s breaches of international law in the OPT. According to the applicant, the EU institutions unlawfully failed to act following its letter of 12 May 2025 in which the association requested: a) the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement; b) the adoption of sanctions under Art. 29 TEU; c) a formal review of all co-operation activities with Israel; and d) the adoption of a clear public position, consistent with the international law obligation to prevent genocide. 

The claim was dismissed on procedural grounds. The GC found that the applicant lacked legal standing (for an earlier post by Szepelak and Kułak criticising the Court’s approach to standing see here). JURDI has appealed the GC’s decision. 

The aim of this post is twofold: a) briefly sketching out the Court’s line of argumentation and conclusions; and b) providing some remarks regarding the broader issues that the case raises. 

The ruling came amidst unfolding developments regarding the EU’s response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In September 2025, following a review of Israel’s compliance with the essential elements clause of the EU-Israel Association Agreement (Art. 2) which concluded that “there are indications that Israel would be in breach of its human rights obligations” under that provision, the Commission proposed to the Council the adoption of a wide-ranging series of measures including the suspension of certain trade provisions of the Association Agreement. However, the proposal failed to gain enough support within the Council and it has been frozen since the US-brokered ceasefire of October 2025 – although the option of EU sanctions against Israel remains on the table. 

The GC’s decision also has to be seen as part of a wider context of ‘public interest’ litigation claiming violations of international humanitarian law both at the international and at the national level. In its March 2024 Application against Germany before the ICJ, Nicaragua claimed that, by providing support to Israel, Germany contravened inter alia its obligation to prevent genocide under international law. At the domestic level, in its judgment of November 2025, the Court of Appeal in The Hague ruled in a case brought by a coalition of NGOs against the Dutch State that there is a serious risk Israel has committed genocide in Gaza and violated international humanitarian law. At the same time, the Dutch Court rejected all the specific requests made by the applicants, highlighting that the State enjoys wide discretion in assessing what measures should be taken to prevent genocide (for comment see here and here). 

Summary of the Judgment

The association adduced three arguments in order to prove that it satisfies the locus standi requirements under Art. 265 TFEU (mirroring Art. 263(4) TFEU). 

 First, JURDI argued that since its statutory mission is the prevention of international crimes and genocide, it is itself directly affected since the institutions’ inaction renders its mission ineffective (para. 4). The GC, recalling its case-law on the conditions that need to be met in order to establish direct concern, found that these were not met in casu since the applicant failed to prove that the measures which the institutions failed to adopt would directly affect the applicant’s legal position (paras. 12-13). The GC highlighted that direct effect cannot be established purely on the basis of an association’s statutory mission. In this vein, it was argued that associations have no right, under EU law, that protects the objectives of their activities from being influenced by acts of the European Union (paras. 14-16). In a similar vein, the Court rejected the argument that JURDI is entitled to bring proceedings acting in the interest of its members since the measures sought would not directly affect the legal situation of the applicant’s members (para. 17). The Court also found that the requirement of individual concern was not met in casu since the applicant did not establish how its status as an association tasked with the promotion of international law distinguishes it from other associations or persons pursuing the same objective (para. 20). 

Secondly, relying on ClientEarth by analogy, JURDI argued that the EU courts should also recognize the admissibility of actions brought by organizations working in the field of promoting respect for international humanitarian law and fundamental rights. The GC rejected the analogy and highlighted that the ClientEarth ruling was limited to recognizing the admissibility of an action in the context of a procedure provided for in the Aarhus Regulation and did not relate to the admissibility requirements under Art. 263(4) TFEU (and thus, Art. 265 TFEU)(paras. 22-25).  

Thirdly, the association argued that the specific nature of the action, as one aimed to uphold international law and to safeguard the Union’s values, justifies relaxing the admissibility requirements in this case. The CJEU also rejected a flexible interpretation of the admissibility requirements under Art. 263(4) (and thus Art. 265) TFEU since this would essentially amount to setting aside those requirements. 

The Court also rejected the claim that the institutions’ failure to adopt a clear public position following its requests amounts to an illegal abstention to act within the meaning of Art. 265 TFEU. According to the GC, the Art. 265 TFEU procedure is meant to sanction the failure to adopt a legally binding act, whereas the adoption of a public opinion is a political act deprived of legal effects (paras. 30-31). 

Comment

Before the Law Stands a Doorkeeeper

The judgment is a stark reminder of the EU’s failure to meaningfully respond to the situation in Gaza. It is also of particular importance in the context of the debate on the international law obligations of the EU, as a third party, arising from Israel’s unlawful conduct in the OPT. In its 2024 Advisory Opinion, the ICJ underscored, inter alia, the obligation of all States and international organizations to abstain from economic or trade dealings with Israel concerning the OPT which may entrench its unlawful presence in the territory (paras. 278, 280). In an expert legal opinion on the implications for the EU of the 2024 ICJ Advisory Opinion published in June 2025, it was stressed that lack of action by the EU to ensure that it complies with its international law obligations could result to claims on the basis of Art. 265 TFEU procedure – although the study noted that such claims would raise complex questions of standing (p. 50). 

In a similar vein to existing climate change case-law, the GC here applied strictly the established criteria for legal standing and it refused to accept observance of international law, a value of the Union’s external action, as a ground for relaxing the requirements in question. The Jurdi judgment attests more broadly to the significant procedural hurdles that public interest litigants face in EU law; the restrictiveness of the relevant rules has been criticised both in the literature but also by members of the Court. In the light of the collective interest at bar, namely the observance of the Union’s international legal obligations in the face of a genocide, the critique seems particularly apt. While coherent with previous case-law, the ruling in essence bars non-privileged applicants from challenging the Union’s inaction on the international plane, despite the existence of relevant international law obligations and the urgency of the matter. 

To be sure, distinct from the issue of standing, it is questionable whether the failure to adopt a clear public position as requested by JURDI amounts to a reviewable omission for the purposes of Art. 265 TFEU. According to the relevant jurisprudence, the purpose of the Art. 265 TFEU procedure is to penalise the failure to adopt a legally binding act (para. 14). However, as the GC concluded, such a position would be a political one and it would not produce binding effects vis-à-vis the applicant. Thus, it seems that only a MS or the European Parliament (as privileged applicants) could in principle challenge the inaction at issue since privileged applicants can challenge the failure to take non-binding acts that have legal effects.

On the Duty to Prevent Genocide

Due to the finding of inadmissibility, the GC did not address whether the EU’s failure to act, as described by JURDI, is in line with its customary international law obligations (ATAA, para.101) and more particularly with the duty to prevent genocide, which is widely regarded as reflecting international law (Dutch Court of Appeal, para. 3.15, Schabas, p. 1703) . As the ICJ explained in the Bosnia Genocide case, the duty to prevent genocide, contained in Art. I of the Genocide Convention, is a duty of due diligence which places States under an obligation “to employ all means reasonably available to them, so as to prevent genocide so far as possible” (para. 430), particularly those States with “the capacity to influence effectively the action of persons likely to commit, or already committing, genocide.” (para. 431). As to the temporal dimension of the prevention obligation, the ICJ has stressed that the duty to act, arises “at the instant that the State learns of, or should normally have learned of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed” (Bosnia Genocide case, para. 431). In this light, the Union’s duty to prevent genocide was arguably triggered since the ICJ ordered the first provisional measures in the South Africa v Israel case (January 2024) indicating that there is a serious risk of genocide in Gaza. This threshold question is important in light of the fact that the Commission seems to maintain that the prevention obligation is only triggered on the basis a prior judicial determination that a genocide has occurred. As the Dutch Court of Appeal highlighted in its November 2025 judgment, “it would be of little practical use if a state were first required to wait for the ICJ’s final judgment on the question of whether genocide has been committed” in order to take action (para. 5.6). 

In substantive terms, the question remains whether the failure to adopt the measures indicated by JURDI entails that the Union has fallen foul of its international law duty to prevent genocide. In Mugraby, the CJEU stated that the suspension of an agreement on the basis of the essential elements clause remains discretionary – without however pronouncing on whether there may be an international law obligation incumbent on the Union to adopt appropriate measures. The precise content of the prevention obligation is difficult to pin down as the duty is highly context-specific and it depends on the State’s capacity to exert influence. Measures that could be taken range from diplomatic protests, to acts of retorsion, including the suspension of agreements, to countermeasures. Arguably, the way in which the Union has reacted to the situation in Gaza falls short of the full range of measures that it could have adopted – particularly in the light of its degree of influence as Israel’s biggest trading partner. 

Nevertheless, considerations akin to the political question doctrine, which broadly means that courts will decline to rule on cases with significant policy implications, could also play a role here. In the light of the “inherently discretionary nature” of the duty to prevent genocide (Van den Herik, Irving, p. 208) as well as of the wide margin of discretion that the EU institutions enjoy in the conduct of external relations (Swiss International Airlines, para. 24), it remains questionable whether the exact measures to be taken to discharge the Union’s prevention obligation are a matter of judicial rather than political determination. The broad discretion of the government in matters of foreign policy also played a large part in the Dutch Court of Appeal’s decision to exercise judicial restraint and to conclude that it is up to the State to determine which measures to take to comply with its obligation under Art. I of the Genocide Convention (Dutch Court of Appeal, para. 5.15).

Overall, the ruling shows that, ultimately, EU courts face considerable difficulties in making up for the lack of political will and internal divisions that have marred the EU’s approach to the Gaza question. More broadly, it highlights the significant (procedural) challenges that regional courts may face in enforcing international law. 

Photo attribution: “Outside the European Court of Justice” by katarina_dzurekova is licensed under CC BY 2.0