In Theory: Overcoming future challenges

It has been almost 30 years since the establishment of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) at the founding summit in Abu Dhabi in 1981.

Since then, the GCC countries have overcome many economic, political and security challenges and difficulties, especially the wars in the region, which lasted many years.

Currently, they are facing new challenges in improving cooperative action. So far, this has mainly been about procedural or consultative agreements but does not reach the issue of sovereignty.

These issues are very important for every country, and making decisions about them may take more time and effort, unlike procedural decisions.

For example, the unified customs tariff or the customs union was immediately implemented in European Union (EU) countries and GCC countries.

On the other hand, the monetary union was joined by 11 European countries when it was first implemented, while other countries joined later to bring the number to 16 — out of the 27 EU members.

This means that 11 EU countries haven't yet joined the monetary union, or the Euro, possibly because considerations vary from one European country to another.

Similar differences

This issue can be understood in view of economic cartels.

Perhaps the GCC is similar to the EU, where sovereign issues require further examination and consideration, which is normal since it is important for GCC countries to move ahead with other issues.

GCC countries, during the Kuwait summit earlier this week, have unanimously approved the power grid link and railway network projects.

They also discussed water security and agreed to face security challenges, which are approved completely by all GCC countries.

With regard to the railway issue, the Union Railway constitutes the nucleus of the GCC railway, for which special tracks will be allocated on the new bridge linking Bahrain and Qatar.

Work in progress

Work on this bridge is expected to begin early next year, and it will be the world's longest bridge once completed.

Similar tracks will be added to the King Fahd Bridge linking Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, to be later connected with the Union Railway of the UAE.

Concerning the power grid link, it will secure electricity supplies to all GCC countries, especially in times of emergency.

It will also save huge amounts of money thanks to reduced production costs and benefiting from surplus power, which cannot be stored and must be consumed once produced.

This results in losing a lot of power, which could be used if the power grid link between GCC countries was completed.

This proves that GCC countries deal with differences in a civilised and responsible spirit by realising that different views do not hinder cooperation and coordination, which is an excellent and unique point to their advantage.

This kind of agreement was not seen in other parts of the Arab world, which froze its economic cooperation for many decades for non-economic reasons.

It is also a great positive development on part of the GCC and shows great maturity on joint action. We only see such professionalism between developed countries such as those in the EU or countries from North America.

Development

This could guarantee that development continues in the future, especially since the council's countries have become a global negotiating power, one which has achieved many gains for GCC countries by signing free trade agreements with several major countries and economic blocs.

GCC countries are also considered the world's top exporters of oil, while Abu Dhabi currently hosts the headquarters of the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena).

Moreover, the economies of GCC countries have become more interlinked and integrated in the past 30 years as economic agreements cemented the GCC cooperation, which developed slowly but steadily.

Leaders reiterated the need to integrate in the fields of education, electricity, water and transport, which are important factors to build Gulf infrastructures.

Dr Mohammad Al Asoomi is a UAE economic expert