This book provides a comprehensive assessment of the various dimensions of the relationship between the European Union and the Gulf Cooperation Council, and highlights how relations are yet to reach their full potential. Despite both parties sharing a number of common interests, including trade, energy, climate change, security and cultural cooperation, the multilateral cooperation framework remains limited, with most engagement taking place bilaterally, between individual European and GCC countries. The book reassesses the potential and prospects for the EU¿s engagement with GCC countries based on the recalibration and reconciliation of both parties¿ national and regional interests. Taking a thematic approach, each of the three sections of the book examines a key dimension of the relationship, its current status and its path forward.

Introduction.- Chapter 1. Overcoming Structural Constraints in EU-GCC Relations:The format, the Content and the Actors.- chapter 2. Tailoring a Local Approach: Extending EU Policy Objectives to facilitate technical and vocational education to work transitions in Saudi Arabia.- Chapter 3. Cultural and Religious Diplomacy as Soft Power in EU-GCC Relations.- chapter 4. Domestic Economic Plans and Visions and Opportunities for Cooperation with Europe.- Chapter 5. Navigating the New Era:Energy and Environmental Considerations in EU-GCC Relations.- Chapter 6. EU-GCC Trade and Investments.- chapter 7. EU-GCC Parliamentary Relations: Multilateral Challenges, Bilateral Gains.- chapter 8. EU approaches to the Gulf Crisis.- chapter 9. Gulf Security Architecture and the Potential Role of Europe.- Conclusion: EU-GCC Relations at a Crossroads.

Dr Adel Abdel Ghafar is a fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings and at the Brookings Doha Center, where he was previously Director of Research. He specializes in political economy and his research interests include state-society relations, socio-economic development and foreign policy in the MENA region.

Dr Silvia Colombo is Senior Fellow in the Mediterranean and Middle East and Italy's Foreign Policy programs at the Rome-based Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI). She is an expert on Middle Eastern politics and in this capacity she is working on Euro-Mediterranean cooperation, EU-GCC relations, political and security developments in the MENA, conflict management and democratization, and gender and youth inclusion.