The EU-GCC Partnership Security and Policy Challenges

March 16 – 17, 2010
Berlin, Germany

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The Bertelsmann Foundation with the support of the Gulf Research Center organized a two-day workshop to look at the status of regional security cooperation in the critical Gulf region, to highlight the current main security challenges, and to outline a series of steps that could be suggested to improve or even help establish more institutional security cooperation among both the regional and external actors that have a stake in a stable regional security environment. The conflicts in the Middle East and the Gulf region are interwoven with each other. In this context, Europe needs to be aware of the special security needs in the Gulf Region, with a particular emphasis on sub-regional structures for cooperation and security in the Gulf that are currently under discussion. Europe and the GCC thus have an interest in dealing with the conflicts in the region through the application of cooperation and dialogue, and the recent expansion of the European Union alongside the development of its foreign, security and defense policies can be used as an example for how to promote and initiate greater confidence-building among the GCC and its neighbors Iraq, Iran and Yemen. This is also relevant as the GCC continues to mature, opening the door to better prospects in the field of cooperative security measures.