Multilateral relations between the European Union (EU) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) remain stuck, despite recent announcements by the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, that the two groups should pursue greater engagement to capitalize on the important role played by the GCC countries on the regional and the international stage. What are the obstacles and the opportunities to revitalize EU-GCC cooperation? Which areas hold the greatest potential? How can bilateral relations between individual countries in the two blocs be leveraged to open up new paths for future multilateral engagement?

On January 11, the Center for Middle East Policy (CMEP) addressed these and other questions, further examining how EU-GCC relations can be concretely revamped at the political, economic and security levels, also taking recent changes in regional and international geopolitics into account. The event drew on the recently published volume, “The European Union and the Gulf Cooperation Council: Towards a New Path” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), edited by CMEP Nonresident Fellow Adel Abdel Ghafar and Silvia Colombo from the Istituto Affari Internazionali.

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