BRUSSELS, The Informal Meeting of EU Foreign Affairs Ministers of the European Union will discuss the EU’s approach to the Gulf states, during their meeting on 2 and 3 September in Slovenia which holds the current EU Presidency.
The minsters of the 27-member bloc will hold a strategic discussion on the on relations with the Gulf states that are emerging in the political and security spheres in the EU neighbourhood, a senior EU official told journalists in Brussels Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“It (Gulf) is part of the region where important developments have been happening in the last year, normalisation of relations of Israel with some Arab countries, the Ula agreement among the GCC countries which put an end to the internal crisis. This was a very good and positive development,” he said.
“We also see some important bilateral contacts, the most important between Iran and Saudi Arabia. All in all we are seeing certain trends that could be conducive to a more structured region in the Gulf,” said the EU official.
He noted that “the Gulf is among the very few regions in the world where there is no architecture of any kind, not for cooperation, not for security not for even trade.” “So it is a very unstructured region and the EU wants to cooperate with the countries in the region in order to create a more regional approach,” he said.
“They are looking for different ways to structure regional relationship and approaches, ” he said referring to the recent international conference in Baghdad.
“The idea on security has to come from the region. And we can be of help in many issues that we are well experienced for example trade , nuclear safety. We can provide expertise to the Gulf countries on that” he said.
“How it has to be done is for them to decide. We can offer cooperation in many different domains including security and defence,” he said.
On the Gulf approach to Afghanistan, he noted that Qatar has played a “key role and is still playing a very important role.” “Qatar is a very constructive country for regional approach and we are talking to them on many issues related with Afghanistan,” he added.
The 2-day EU ministerial meeting will focus on three main topics: Afghanistan, the EU’s approach to the Gulf states and EU-China relations.
On the first day of the meeting on Thursday the EU foreign ministers will meet for a working session on Afghanistan. Relations with the Gulf will be discussed on the second day, Friday.
He said that developments in Afghanistan will have long term implications for Europe and the international community.
“The idea is to see what options are there for the EU to approach the future of Afghanistan. It depends on what is going to happen in the coming days and weeks. The ministers will be talking about humanitarian aid regional implications and security ,” he said.
The EU will engage with the Taliban as they will be a very important part of the future government in Afghanistan, he stressed.
The topic of the last working session will be the common approach of the EU to relations with China.
The two-day ministerial will be chaired by the EU High Representative Josep Borrell.
At the end of the informal EU ministerial meeting , Slovenian Minister of Foreign Affairs Anze Logar, will host the EU foreign ministers for a working lunch with Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. The ministers will jointly discuss the broader engagement of the EU in the Indo-Pacific region.
The venue of the meeting will be the Brdo Estate, an estate near the city of Kranj and Ljubljana Airport.
These informal EU foreign ministers meetings , known as Gymnich, , take place bi-annually and are hosted by the country holding the Presidency of the European Union. This type of meeting received its name from the first of such events held at castle Gymnich in Germany in 1974.
Informal meetings of EU Foreign Ministers cannot take formal decisions.
Source: Kuwait News Agency