Ilka Schroeder

Ilka Schroeder is a former Member of the European Parliament (1999-2004). After having left the Green Party in 2002, she carried on as an independent Member. It was then, when she started to inquire into EU funding for the Palestinian Authority. Schroeder’s initiative for an inquiry committee on this matter was turned down on grounds that had never been applied to such a demand.

Confronted with a majority in the House that did not want to confront the allegations of corruption or of the funding’s use for terrorist activities against Israel, Schroeder became strongly involved in the issues of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism, particularly in Europe. She continued to raise these points as a full member of the Committee on Citizens’ Freedoms and Rights and the Committee on Justice and Home Affairs and as a substitute member of the Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy.

Schroeder has spoken extensively on these issues throughout Europe. During the last three years, she has also given lectures in the US, Canada and Israel. She has spoken at the UNESCO conference on anti-Semitism and has testified in front of the International Development Committee of the United Kingdom House of Commons as well as at the US House Committee’s International Relations’ Subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia.

She has published numerous articles about various issues in the European and Israeli media and has lately focused on the EU’s policy in the Middle East and on European anti-Semitism.

Since finishing her five-year-term in the European Parliament in 2004, she has also published a critical book on Europe’s attempts to play a bigger role in world politics (in German, Weltmacht Europa – Hauptstadt Berlin?).

Schroeder currently teaches at Georgetown University in Washington D.C.