EU-GCC Relations in the Era of the Second Oil Boom

The main results of my below analysis of recent developments in the GCC and the chances they offer for the EU are as follows: • The GCC has emerged as a hub of supreme economic and political importance, overshadowing the rest of the MENA region, but at the same time becoming increasingly integrated with it. As economic powers, GCC countries have a vested interest in regional peace. • A much deepened European commitment towards EU-GCC cooperation is needed, and needs to be explicitly reconciled with large EU members’ bilateral strategies and interests. • The EU needs to formulate a clear vision and benchmarks of cooperation, draw in high-level commitment, and create follow-up mechanisms for its GCC policies, which thus far have been too haphazard. • The EU will have to overcome certain hurdles in multilateral cooperation with the GCC and needs to pursue a differentiated approach that allows for bilateralism when it is necessary, but strives for collective solutions where it is possible. • It needs to recognize both its diplomatic advantages and its limits towards the GCC: While its economic influence and its technocratic prestige are considerable, its political leverage will always be very limited, even more so than in other parts of the Middle East. • Yet, the liberalization processes that have unfolded during recent years in the Gulf provide new access points for cooperation on reform in places as different as Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar. The EU needs to play up its comparative advantages as multilateral body with wide regulatory experience, as something the GCC itself aspires to become