Brussels, 18/05/2000 (Agence Europe) - The EU/GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) Joint Cooperation Council is meeting in Brussels on 20 May 2000 on the fringe of the General Affairs Council. This joint institution, created in the framework of the first cooperation agreement of 1988 signed by the two groups of countries, will thus be holding its tenth session (the 9th was held in Dubai last November).
As usual, ministers will first discuss cooperation begun under the 1988 Framework-Agreement and examine a series of joint actions being envisaged in the fields of the environment and cooperation between businesses. During this session, the launch of cooperation measures in the media, customs and inter-university relations have been announced. The two groups of countries have already almost annual meetings of businessmen but those scheduled for this year have been postponed to next year (organisational difficulties on the part of the United Arab Emirates) and will be held in Riyadh at a date yet to be decided.
The second topic on the agenda will be a general exchange of views on the international political situation and in the region (Middle East, Iraq, Iran, etc.), as well as on internal developments in each group of countries. The EU Presidency will brief the Gulf ministers on recent Community initiatives relating to security and defence, as well as, we are told, programmes for employment.
Third topic: the state of negotiations for a second agreement based on reciprocal free trade. It will be more a question of looking at the situation than negotiating anything. In April, a special session was specifically devoted to this issue. European sources state that discussions are progressing relatively well and that the beginning of an agreement is already taking shape, especially on the structure of the text of the future agreement (they have already begun to draw it up) and on the fate of most of the non-sensitive products. Talks, however, remain at a standstill regarding the trade regime for certain oil, aluminium and sea products. It seems that one should not expect the deadlock to be broken before the last stages of the negotiations which will progress at the pace of the construction of the Customs Union being envisaged in the Gulf region, and whose implementation is a precondition to the conclusion of the EU-GCC free-trade agreement. The European Commission is still waiting to know the structure of the CCT (common customs tariff) adopted by the GCC last year, whose implementation has moreover been put off to 2005.
The GCC countries, especially the Wahabi Kingdom, seem to be becoming impatient and the Saudi press has referred to an internal memorandum that threatens to put a stop to everything and even repeal the 1988 agreement, if negotiations on free trade do not progress more rapidly with satisfactory answers on the subjects over which talks have been the most bitter. Some observers consider, however, this Saudi "nervousness" to be an expression of the classic dramatization in the final stages of negotiations, rather than a serious intention.