The updated UN database of companies linked to Israeli settlements is an opportunity to correct one shameful flaw in European governments’ policies on the conflict.
30 September 2025
By Martin Konečný
On 26 September, the UN human rights office (OHCHR) released an updated version of its database of businesses involved in Israel’s illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) – a tool launched in 2020 to shed light on economic structures aiding the settlement expansion.
As many Western countries currently toughen up their positions on Israel and the settlements, they should also review their – until now mostly negative – stance on the database.
The new edition lists 158 companies: 138 Israeli, 12 European, six American, one Canadian, and one Chinese. This is up from 112 companies, including 11 European ones, listed in the initial 2020 version – subsequently reduced to 97 companies in a partial update in 2023 (which did not involve adding any new ones). The OHCHR has now removed further seven and added 68 new companies.
European companies listed
Below are the 12 European companies per country (newly added ones marked with *). The links connect to descriptions of their settlement-related activities by the NGO Who Profits – separate from the UN database.
- Spain (4): ACS*, CAF*, Ineco*, SEMI*
- France (2): Egis and Egis Rail
- UK (2): Greenkote, JCB Excavators
- Luxembourg (1): Altice International
- Netherlands (1): Booking.com
- Germany (1): Heidelberg Materials*
- Portugal (1): Steconfer*
Compared to the initial 2020 version, six European companies were added and five removed as no longer involved: Alstom (France), eDreams Odigeo (Luxembourg), Tahal Group International and Kardan (Netherlands), and Opodo (UK).
However, it is not just the companies but also governments that must be put on the spot here, in two respects:
1. Responsibility of host governments
Governments hosting companies listed in the database have a duty to ensure that these businesses end their activities contributing to settlements and related human rights violations. As the UN report notes, they must newly also take account of the July 2024 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice and its implications for regulating business enterprises under their jurisdiction.
Being on the list is especially contradictory for governments that have recently sought to demonstrate their support for Palestinian rights. As noted by Hugh Lovatt:
“Though they have recognised the State of Palestine, the UK, France, Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, Canada and China all continue to allow their companies to support Israel’s internationally unlawful settlements, undermining Palestinian rights & sovereignty.”
Spain’s position as the “top” European country in the database is particularly awkward, given that the Sánchez government has gone further than most EU states by taking a whole list of measures to end complicity in Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians. Yesterday, the government announced an investigation to ensure that “any company operating in Spain abandons all operations linked to the Israeli occupation, whether directly or indirectly.”
All EU states except for Hungary and the Czech Republic recently voted to endorse the New York Declaration on the two-state solution. They should look back at the declaration’s Annex, which explicitly calls on states to “make proper use of the UN Database” to “ensure respect for international law by all business enterprises contributing directly or indirectly to Israeli settlements” in the OPT, “including by using regulatory and policy tools to enforce corporate respect for human rights for companies domiciled in their jurisdiction”.
2. European positions at the UN
Most European governments have taken a shamefully non-supportive to outright negative position on the database at the UN over the past years, contradicting their stated opposition to settlements as illegal under international law and undermining the two-state solution.
In 2016, EU states pressured the Palestinians to drop the request to establish the database from a resolution on Israeli settlements at UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). When the Palestinians refused, EU states on the Council collectively abstained. Half of them – the UK, Germany, Latvia, and the Netherlands – further retaliated by abstaining on a parallel resolution on accountability for the 2014 Gaza war, as a price for Palestinian refusal to delete the database point in the settlements resolution.
Publicly, the EU’s reason against the database was that individual “member states have the primary role” in raising awareness of businesses about the legal risks of settlements. That was a sham excuse because the database is only a tool for states and does not take away their primacy. The same EU countries did not object to UN lists of companies complicit in abuses in Myanmar and DRC. “Member state primacy” somehow was not an issue in those contexts.
The real reasons were bias and fear of being accused of “boycotting” or “singling out” Israel –which weighed politically more than commitments to international law and the two-state solution.
In July 2023, most European members of the UNHRC – Finland, France, Germany, Lithuania, and Romania – once again abstained on a resolution asking for regular updating of the database. Only Belgium and Luxembourg voted in favour. Czechia and the UK voted outright against. Even countries like Ireland and Spain did not express clear support for the database in those years.
This exemplifies the broader European complacency and inaction as settlements were expanding and burying Palestinian rights and prospects for peace in the years up to the 2023 explosion. Europeans criticised them on paper but opposed even this tiny act of transparency at the UN.
This will hopefully change now as many Western governments – belatedly and insufficiently – harden their positions on Israel and against the settlements, forced by public outrage over atrocities in Gaza. Amid a stream of decisions to ban sale of arms to Israel, stop imports from settlements, and proposals to suspend EU-Israel preferential trade, shifting policy on the UN database should be one of the lowest-hanging fruits and a no-brainer. Specifically, governments should start actively supporting the database and its continuous updating at the UNHRC and vote for any further resolutions and allocation of resources to that effect.
For now, there is not much sign of a shift yet. Yesterday, when the updated database was presented at the UNHRC, Slovenia was the only European government to mention it and offer clear words of support in its intervention.
P.S. It should be noted that the UN database takes a relatively narrow approach to defining corporate involvement in the settlements and, in addition, does not look at companies complicit in the Gaza war. The Who Profits database, the reports of the NGO coalition Don’t Buy Into Occupation, and UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s report “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide” provide – each in their own way – a broader picture of implicated corporate actors. The OHCHR itself says that it has received information on 596 companies but has so far only managed to analyse 215 of them and will continue to review the rest for future updates.