PRESS RELEASE – FOR IMMEDIATE PUBLICATION
New database on EU academic collaborations with Israel shows hundreds of ongoing projects
28 May 2026 – Today the Academic Complicity project launches a new database [1], listing all ties between EU academic and research institutions and Israeli entities under the EU-funded Horizon Europe programme for research and development. The database reveals that, in spite of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, increasing violence and repression on the West Bank and the illegal Israeli attacks on Iran and Lebanon, 631 European universities and institutes are still involved in cooperation with Israeli universities, companies and government institutions in 355 projects.
The database serves as a source of information for researchers, journalists and activists. It is based on official EU data and previous research from various organisations. Germany tops the list, with 101 institutions and 246 Horizon Europe projects – the most of any country. Other major partners are France (62 institutions in 114 projects), Italy (52 institutions in 175 projects), Spain (44 institutions in 150 projects), the Netherlands (25 institutions in 141 projects) and the UK (57 institutions in 123 projects).
This new pan-European map specifically focusses on Horizon Europe, the world’s largest taxpayer-funded research program [2]. It attempts to show the scale of European academic complicity in the ongoing conflicts. Several of the Israeli project partners are military companies, and previous investigation has shown [3] that many such Horizon Europe research projects work on technologies with dual-use applications: they can be used for both military and civilian capabilities, in contravention of Horizon’s own rules.
The Academic Complicity project started in June 2024 with a website listing all known ties between Dutch universities and Israeli entities. Similar websites for Belgium, Germany, France and Norway followed. In each case the databases are compiled in cooperation with student and staff activists at universities in the specific country.
Israeli universities and several Israeli companies have been documented to be actively complicit in the violation of Palestinian rights, including war crimes against Palestinians and violations of international law. Other companies and knowledge institutions may not be obviously complicit in the violation of Palestinian rights, but are part of an economy and knowledge ecosystem based in Palestinian dispossession.
Students and staff at many universities and other institutions have been calling for an academic boycott of Israel for many years prior, because Israeli academic institutions have been complicit in apartheid, colonization, and occupation of the Palestinian people for many decades.
[1] https://academiccomplicity.eu/horizon/
[2] https://www.bmftr.bund.de/EN/Research/InternationalAffairs/Europe/HorizonEurope/horizoneurope.html
[3] https://www.ftm.nl/artikelen/onderzoek-nederlandse-universiteiten-met-israelische-defensiebedrijven
