Brenda Shaffer and Yael Shaffer examine a 2019 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union in the Psagot case. The court held that goods from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights cannot be labeled Products of Israel when sold in the EU, since the EU does not recognize Israeli jurisdiction there.
The authors ask whether this sets a general rule for all occupied territories the EU does not recognize, or whether it applies to Israel alone. They focus on Armenia’s occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and other Azerbaijani territory as a close parallel. Armenia has built extensive settlements there, much like Israel has in the West Bank, and those territories are recognized by the UN, US, and EU as part of Azerbaijan.
Yet the authors show that products from Armenian settlements in occupied Azerbaijani territory are labeled and sold across the EU simply as Products of Armenia, with none of the scrutiny applied to Israeli settlement goods.
