Workshop

 

The EU-GCC Partnership Security and Policy Challenges

March 16 – 17, 2010
Berlin, Germany

This workshop will be hosted and organized by Bertelsmann Stiftung in Berlin, focusing on issues of security and politics in current affairs. The coming years will bear witness to a potentially conflict-prone struggle over a number of resources, including access to raw materials and new markets. Regional partnerships and security structures must therefore be given adequate support, since a stable Gulf Region can serve as a reliable source of energy for Europe enabling prosperity, education and employment for its own citizens and neighbours. 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. As in other workshops, recommendations will be formulated on how the security cooperation between the GCC and the EU can be improved and how a sub-regional security and cooperation structure for the Gulf Region can be established.