In this paper, we use the unfolding events surrounding the publication of the EU Guidelines prohibiting the allocation of funds to Israeli entities in the Occupied Territories in order to offer three observations about the impact of ʻthe local’ on ʻNormative Power Europe’ (NPE): 1) the case study reveals the growing influence of the power of ʻthe European local’ on the decision of whether or not to deploy normative power; 2) it underscores that local power relations in the target country often determine the reaction to NPE, while the reaction often produces the visibility of the normative edicts and thus helps empower NPE; and 3) that NPE’s visibility has an impact on the EU’s self-identification, but not necessarily on the policies it criticizes. These observations underscore the importance of analyzing the various levels of ʻthe local’ and their relation to NPE in order to understand the latter’s political impact.
