“Today’s EU General Court judgment is procedural and does not mean the EU and UK have changed their position on Hamas.” This was the wording of the Dec. 17 announcement by the British Foreign Office following the removal that day of the Hamas movement from the European Union’s list of terror organizations.
On the face of it, this was indeed a procedural-technical ruling. It was based on the Tamil Tigers precedent, a decision by the European Court of Justice from October 2014 to remove the Sri Lankan organization from the EU list of terror groups, accepting its appeal that its inclusion on the list had violated procedure and was devoid of strong legal proof. Hamas identified the Achilles' heel of the “black list” and submitted a similar appeal, following which it too was removed from the list. The court delayed implementation of its ruling for three months to allow appeals and submission of incriminating evidence against the organization.