“Nobody is able to tolerate this humanitarian situation right now. So we need decisions. And the high representative was asked to bring initial proposals to the table and she will do it … during July and probably the [Foreign Affairs Council] will take some measures,” he went on.

Kallas presented the findings of an internal review conducted at the request of 19 member countries — first obtained by POLITICO last week — that found the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may have breached the terms of the EU-Israel Association Agreement. While backing Israel’s right to self-defense, the analysis cited an “unprecedented level of killing and injury of civilians,” attacks on hospitals and the displacement of an estimated 90 percent of the population of the territory.

Israel denies the allegations and has blasted the review as “outrageous.”

Ahead of Thursday’s summit, officials had indicated that Kallas would determine whether there was sufficient support in the room before undertaking to present options for concrete actions.

While tearing up the agreement would require the unanimous support of all member countries — with allies like Germany and Hungary vehemently opposed to the move — lesser measures, including slashing trade ties and sanctioning exports from illegal West Bank settlements, could theoretically be done with the support of a qualified majority of countries.

“In all these cases, Europe loses credibility. Everybody is looking at us and we can say only that we are deeply worried and deeply concerned,” Nausėda said.

A Commission spokesperson declined to comment.

This story has been updated.

When asked about concrete outcomes, Merz said he had “no doubt at all that the American government is committed to NATO” and that the White House and the Chancellery would strengthen their bilateral trade partnership.

“We will be advising two representatives who are now talking intensively with each other about German-American trade relations embedded in the European framework,” he said. “The lunch was worth its weight in gold for that.”

Merz said he will extensively brief European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen later on Friday. The European Commission is working to strike a far-reaching trade deal with Trump, who doubled tariffs on steel and aluminum to 50 percent this week.

In the run-up to his visit, Merz had prepared for an ambush of the kind endured by the leaders of Ukraine and South Africa. It appeared to work.

“It wasn’t a press conference, but a good show in the Oval Office,” Merz said about the encounter, during which Trump called Merz “a very good man to deal with” and voiced optimism that the U.S. would eventually reach “a good trade deal” with the European Union. Trump also said he had no plans to remove any of the nearly 35,000 U.S. troops stationed in Germany.

“These are concrete, I hope, reliable statements from the U.S. president that Friedrich Merz will come back to and can be built on,” Jürgen Hardt, the lead parliamentarian on foreign policy from Merz’s conservatives, told Welt TV. “The message was ‘We are good friends,’ and what more could we want?”

“We are highly alarmed by these developments,” reads the letter, signed by Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia and Sweden.

France and Germany have also signed on, an EU diplomat told POLITICO.

A series of Hungarian laws which threaten fines against organizers of and participants in LGBTQ+ events, under the guise of child protection, “run contrary to the fundamental values to human dignity, freedom, equality and respect for human rights as laid down in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union,” the statement reads.

The text doesn’t spell out which measures Brussels should take. The obvious option, though, would be to impose “interim measures” against Hungary, which are tantamount to EU legal injunctions against a government to prevent harm, in this case by ordering Budapest to allow the Pride celebration.

Brussels, which is withholding €18 billion in EU funds from Hungary over rule-of-law violations, has so far balked at further coercive action. Equality Commissioner Hadja Lahbib pushed back on the idea of imposing interim measures during a meeting last week, according to a participant. A failure to implement the measures could then trigger penalties.

Lahbib told the lawmakers she lacked support from her boss, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, for further action.

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“We will not stand by while the Netanyahu government pursues these egregious actions. If Israel does not cease the renewed military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid, we will take further concrete actions in response,” they added.

The rare, joint intervention by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney earned a sharp rebuke from Netanyahu, who hit out at the three leaders in a statement of his own late Monday.

“By asking Israel to end a defensive war for our survival before Hamas terrorists on our border are destroyed and by demanding a Palestinian state, the leaders in London, Ottowa [sic] and Paris are offering a huge prize for the genocidal attack on Israel on October 7 while inviting more such atrocities,” Netanyahu wrote on social media.

“Israel accepts President Trump’s vision and urges all European leaders to do the same,” he added, apparently referring to the U.S. leader’s proposal to take over Gaza, expel its resident Palestinian population and redevelop it. The plan has been roundly dismissed by Middle Eastern and European countries and the United Nations, which warned against “any form of ethnic cleansing,” but was quickly embraced by Netanyahu.

The British-French-Canadian declaration reflects an overall souring in the attitudes of Israel’s Western allies toward its grinding military offensive in Gaza, which it launched after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, cross-border raid killed 1,200 Israelis.

Macron publicly feuded with Netanyahu last year after calling for a halt to arms deliveries to Israel and again last month when he floated French recognition of a Palestinian state.