EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso will visit Israel and the Palestinian Territories at the end of this week, the Commission spokesperson confirmed on Wednesday.
Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen confirmed the trip to EJP but couldn’t yet give details of the programme which she said, "is still being finalized."
It will be the first official visit by the head of the EU’s executive body to the region since he was appointed in 2004.
Barroso will travel to Israel on Friday from Cyprus where he is due to meet the authorities of the country which took over the six-month rotating presidency of the European Union since July 1.
He is expected to travel Sunday to the Palestinian Territories where he will meet with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas before opening an EU-funded police training center
On Monday, he will meet Israel’s leaders, including President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The European Union is the largest donor to the Palestinian Authority and Israel’s main trade partner.
Barroso’s visit is considered in Brussels as a major diplomatic gain for Israel, whose relations with the European Union have rather been tense in the last few months.
Last May, in a strongly worded statement, the European Union blamed Israel for the Israeli-Palestinian talks impasse and said developments on the ground " threaten to make a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians impossible," citing the acceleration of Israeli settlement construction.
Last month, in a debate on the Middle East in the European Parliament, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who is also Vice President of the European Commission, stressed that "settlement expansion in the West Bank remains the most urgent concern."
Whilst Ashton condemned rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza, she called on the Israeli government "to reverse the decisions to further pursue settlement expansion plans” which she said “are illegal under international law."
56-year-old Barroso is a former Prime Minister in Portugal from 2002 to 2204.
He was nominated by the European Council (the 27 EU heads of state or government) at the helm of the EU Commission in 2004 and reappointed in 2009 for a second term.

EJP