The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is a political and economic alliance of six Middle Eastern countries.Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, united arab emirates, qatar, Bahrain and Oman. The GCC was established in May 1981 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The purpose of the GCC is to achieve unity among member states based on common objectives and similar political and cultural identities rooted in Arab and Islamic culture. The chair of the council changes every year.
Perhaps the most important article of the GCC Charter is Article 4, which states that the Union was established to strengthen relations between member states and promote cooperation among their peoples. The GCC also has a Defense Planning Council that coordinates military cooperation among member states. The GCC’s highest decision-making body is the Supreme Council, which is comprised of the heads of state of the GCC countries and meets annually. Decisions of the Supreme Council are adopted by unanimous approval. The Council of Ministers, consisting of the Minister of Foreign Affairs or other government officials, meets every three months to implement the Supreme Council’s decisions and propose new policies. The governing arm of the Union is the Office of the Secretary-General, which monitors the implementation of policies and arranges meetings.
GCC agreements typically focus on either security or economic partnership. Regarding security coordination, the policy includes the creation of the Peninsular Shield, a joint military enterprise based in Saudi Arabia, in 1984 and the conclusion of an intelligence-sharing agreement in 2004. The Peninsula Shield Force was in Bahrain in 2011, protecting government infrastructure from the insurgency there. Arab Spring protests. Economic coordination included attempts at economic integration, but integration agreements were often lackluster compared to policy coordination. An agreement to launch a single regional currency similar to the euro by 2010 has seen little movement beyond the creation of a currency council in 2009. However, coordination on tax policy has proven to be fruitful, with the Customs Union coming into force in 2015 and member states launching a customs union. expand Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates tend to take the lead in policy coordination. They were the first country to send troops to Bahrain in 2011, and the first country to impose a value-added tax.
Although the GCC’s membership remained consistent throughout its first decades, changes in regional relations sometimes led to speculation about membership changes. Expansion seemed possible if the interests of the Gulf states were aligned with those of other Arab states. Two other Arab monarchies, Jordan and Morocco, were invited to join the GCC in 2011 during the Arab Spring uprisings. Morocco rejected it, but Jordan’s application was still delayed due to disagreements within the GCC. Conflicts of interest sometimes caused rifts. Egypt and other GCC members Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain imposed a blockade against Qatar in 2017. In December 2018, the emir of Qatar was absent from the annual GCC summit and sent a special envoy in his place, but he sent a prime minister in 2019 as tensions appeared to be rising. Unzip. The blockade was lifted during the annual summit held in January 2021, which was also attended by the emir of Qatar.
