Israeli state-owned arms firm Rafael could lose EU grant money after posting a PR clip on X in which its drone, the Spike Firefly, killed a man in Gaza.
"If evidence of non-compliance arises within the context of the action, all appropriate measures will be implemented ... including the possibility to recover fully or partly the awarded funding from the grantee," an EU Commission official told EUobserver.
The "action" referred to a video clip posted on Rafael's corporate channel on X on 7 July in which a Spike Firefly killed what looked like an unarmed non-combatant walking down the street in northern Gaza.
The clip prompted public outrage on social media and was subsequently taken down by Rafael, but not before it had been downloaded by angry viewers.
Rafael declined to answer EUobserver's questions about the incident.
But the EU official said the Commission was "aware of the recent [X] post" and had referred the case to an "independent ethics advisor" attached to its flagship 'Horizon Europe' scientific research programme.
The Horizon ethics advisor, Katerina Hadjimatheou, is a criminologist at University of Essex in the UK.
Rafael received €442,750 of EU money in 2023 in an Horizon project on "underwater security", which had purely "civil applications".
The Israeli defence ministry (€100,000) and Tel Aviv University (€299,000) also received EU money from the same project.
"The ethics advisor will assess the relevance of the information provided [on Rafael] ... and will keep the commission informed of the evaluation findings," the EU official said, without giving a timeframe for the assessment.
The official cited articles 14 and 11 of the Horizon grant agreement, which said beneficiaries had to comply with "all applicable legal obligations under EU, international, and national law".
"The grant agreement also obliges all the beneficiaries to ensure that basic EU values are respected," the EU official said.
The drone video aside, Rafael is a major contractor for the Israeli defence ministry whose equipment has been widely used in Gaza, where Israel has killed over 59,000 people in what the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague has called a "plausible" genocide.
Five Italian leftwing and Green MEPs have written to the Commission asking whether "it will move to suspend or exclude Rafael from future EU-funded research activities".
Seven European academics from British and Italian universities, including University of Edinburgh in the UK and University of Molise in Italy, also criticised EU funding of Rafael in an expert opinion addressed to Hadjimatheou on 19 July about Rafael's "marketing video" showing the "targeted killing of an unarmed civilian walking alone down a street".
"The use of such footage to advertise weaponry not only normalises potentially unlawful violence against civilians, but also reflects a corporate culture fundamentally at odds with the values and legal responsibilities underpinning Horizon Europe," they said.
"Funding a partner that is directly complicit in war crimes … could result in serious accountability implications for the EU Commission," they added, referring to a case against EU institutions filed at the EU Court of Justice over its alleged failure to adhere to the ICJ genocide ruling.
Rafael's drone systems were also "reportedly active during the 1 April 2024 [Israeli] strike that killed seven humanitarian workers from World Central Kitchen [a US-based charity], despite the convoy's prior coordination and visibility markings," the academics' letter said.
And the €100,000 in Horizon funding for the Israeli defence ministry was equally "morally indefensible and legally impermissible under EU and international law", they also said in an "addendum" to Hadjimatheou on 20 July.
Meanwhile, Rafael's website described the Spike Firefly as a "miniature loitering munition" that weighed 2.2kg and had a range of 5km.
The firm reported total orders for all its products worth NIS52bn (€13.2bn) in 2023, with 57 percent coming from foreign buyers.
It has also seen record-breaking income since the Gaza war began in 2023, including a 27 percent boost in sales last year.
"That a company profiting from, and flaunting arms used against civilians in one of the most intense and destructive wars in recent history concurrently receives public research funds from a peace-oriented program like Horizon Europe's Underwater Security, raises serious and grave concerns," the British and Italian academics said on 19 July.
The EU Commission declined to say if any other Israeli arms firms were receiving Horizon money.
But an investigation published by EUobserver in June showed that another drone maker, Israel Aerospace Industries, had received millions of euros from the European Defence Fund.
This story was amended to add the name of Horizon's ethics advisor and to mention the addendum on the Israeli defence ministry grant
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Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.
Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.