Little systematic effort has been made to examine the role of law and its implications for EU foreign policy‐making. Addressing this research gap, we identify key legal dynamics that operate in supranational policies, but have increasingly led to legal ‘spillovers’, both institutionally and discursively, into the Common Foreign and Security Policy. We illustrate the relevance of these dynamics for the case of EU–Israeli relations. Since the late 1990s, legal inconsistencies in EU–Israeli co‐operation have been addressed by the Commission via soft law, by various MEPs via parliamentary questions, and by the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Simultaneously, external actors like NGOs and corporations have used the EU's legal infrastructure to confront the EU with the fact that its de facto relations have not lived up its de jure position. Over time and also as a consequence of the Lisbon Treaty, even the Council found it difficult to ignore non‐compliance with its own legal position.