• May 22, 2013: France listed Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.
• July 22, 2013: The European Union listed the Hezbollah Military Wing as a terrorist organization. 

In March of 2013, then-French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius declared France’s support for adding Hezbollah’s “armed wing” to the European Union’s list of terrorist organizations. However, France has rejected proscribing Hezbollah in its entirety, even after several other European countries took that step – including the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Germany. France believes that continuing dialogue with Hezbollah’s political “arm” is necessary to promote stability in Lebanon since the group is a powerful political, governmental, and social component in Lebanon.

The European Union decided to ban Hezbollah’s military wing in July of 2013 in response to concerns over the group’s military involvement in the Syrian Civil War, and its suspected responsibility for a bombing of a civilian bus in Burgas, Bulgaria in 2012. The E.U. has resisted calls to proscribe the whole of the group, presumably for the same reasons as France, which holds considerable sway in the E.U.’s decision-making on the matter.