EU/GCC: Press remarks by High Representative Josep Borrell ahead of the ministerial dinner

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Good evening,

I am very happy to host my colleagues, the Foreign Ministers, from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the European Union. It is for a dinner ahead of the leaders' summit which will take place tomorrow.

Both meetings, today at the ministerial level, and tomorrow at the level of leaders, reflect the growing dynamics, the positive dynamics, between the Gulf Cooperation Countries and the European Union.

It was two years ago - a little bit more, in May 2022 - when we launched the Strategic Partnership with the Gulf. We appointed European Union Special Representative [Luigi Di Maio] to push forward this Strategy.

What have we done since then?

We had a [EU-GCC] Structured [Security] Dialogue in January in Riyadh. We had a High-Level Forum on Regional Security and Cooperationin April, in Luxembourg. We held the first [joint] training of diplomats - Gulf Cooperation Council and the European Union - in our [European] Diplomatic Academy, in Bruges. Tomorrow we will have the first ever summit at the Leaders' level between the Gulf [Cooperation Council] and the European Union.

These meetings, today and tomorrow, show, confirm, at the highest political level, our joint commitment to develop cooperation and [our] strategic partnership. Our message is clear: we are ready to act more and more together in facing common challenges.

This strategic partnership is not only about security. There are a lot of other issues in which we have to cooperate: on trade, on development assistance, on green and digital transitions, on connectivity - the Gulf [countries] are at the crossroad between Europe, Asia, Central Asia, South-East Asia, Africa; people-to-people contacts.

Tonight, as you can imagine, the Ministers will focus on the situation in the Middle East, in Iran, in the Horn of Africa. The GCC countries are very active, they are good brokers in international affairs, and we value immensely our cooperation on these dossiers.

We discussed it in Luxembourg, yesterday, at the Foreign Affairs Council. It is important to discuss with our colleagues from the Gulf [Cooperation Council] today because they are worried - maybe more worried than us because they are closer to the problem - [concerning] the security and stability of the Middle East. [They have] the same interest to work together towards a real, lasting and just peace between Israel and Palestine. [This is] for the whole region.

I will debrief you more in detail in the press conference tomorrow.

Tonight is a working dinner. It will last, I suppose, a couple of hours, so do not wait for me. I will have to go and receive all the excellencies coming, other leaders coming from the Gulf, but tomorrow we will have the occasion to go deeper into these subjects.

Q&A

Q. Mr Borrell, I have a question concerning this Strategic Partnership that you are talking about. On which ground you can build this Strategic partnership?

I think that we share the same concerns about peace and security in the whole region. The region, [the] Middle East - and going down to the Gulf and the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea. All this part of the world is on the edge of a real problem, if the war in Gaza and Lebanon spills over and creates a frontal and direct confrontation between Iran and Israel. So, we have a common interestto ensure peace and security in this part of the world.

Q. I have a question concerning this common ground. Both of you, you are defending the Two-State Solution. This is feeding more and more in the international arena. Do you think you can make a kind of coalition for peace, as I understood you are planning to support at the peace conference that is supposed to be hosted by Spain?

The Peace Conference will come, but in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), last month in New York, we already launched a Global Alliance for the Two-Solution. 90 countries signed to be part of this global coalition for the Two-State Solution which - in practical terms - means to implement the Palestinian state. We did that together with two co-chairs, the Saudi Foreign Affairs Minister [Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud], and the Norwegian Minister [for Foreign Affairs, Espen Barth Eide]. So, now we have to continue working on this line. There will be a meeting in Riyad, another one in Brussels. We have to keep the momentum.

Q. When you read what analysts in the Gulf say before this summit, they talk of 'cautious optimism' and they feel because you want them to understand that Ukraine is an existential crisis yet, at the same time, the European Union does not do enough in the escalation of the war to stop the de-escalation. It is a topic that you addressed many times but what will you tell them tonight, to convince them further?

More or less the same things. I do not have new arguments. We will repeat the same considerations. The advantage of tonight's working dinner is that we are sitting among friends, people who know each other, that trust each other, that share the same concerns, that want peace in the region, that want peace in Ukraine. I think that both of us know that the peace in Ukraine has to go hand in hand with the peace in the Middle East. They are two different wars, different reasons, different histories, but at the end, the target, the purpose, the objective is the same; to get peace among people in Ukraine and in the Middle East.

Link to the video: https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/video/I-262455

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