Manama: With the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit scheduled in Bahrain next month, Bahrainis have been expressing hope that the annual gathering of the six leaders or their representatives will make a giant step forward towards the Gulf union.

The GCC, comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, was established in 1981.

In December 2011, then Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz said that it was time for the GCC member states to move from the phase of cooperation to the phase of union within a single entity.

The six states welcomed the call, but some said they needed some time to look into the details. Bahrain and Saudi Arabia have been in the forefront for the transition.

But in 2013, Yousuf Bin Alawi Bin Abdullah, the Omani Minister Responsible for Foreign Affairs, said that his country did not support the union.

However, with the unexpected delays, there were talks that some of the GCC countries could set up a core union of some of the six member states and that the other members could join at their own pace.

“The Gulf union is the objective that cannot be missed as it is a necessity imposed by the current situation laden with security and economic challenges and ominous dangers that can be confronted only through the GCC states moving from the stage of cooperation to the stage of union,” Prime Minister Prince Khalifa Bin Salman Al Khalifa, one of the most enthusiastic champions of the Gulf union, said last week.

“The summit in Bahrain will be highly significant in strengthening the GCC,” he told citizens, civil society figures, diplomats and the media.

Shaikh Abdul Latif Al Mahmoud, the head of the National Union Assembly, said that the GCC leaders should stand together and work on the formation of a union, starting with two or more states and leaving the door open to the other member states to join at a later time.

“This forward-looking move is perfectly in line with Article Four of the GCC Charter that stipulates that one of its basic objectives is ‘to effect coordination, integration and interconnection between member states in all fields in order to achieve unity between them’,” he said last week at a meeting.

Former Foreign Ministry undersecretary for GCC Affairs Hamad Al Amer said that people were looking forward to a decision by the GCC leaders at their summit in Bahrain to launch the much-anticipated Gulf union with the membership of the countries that are ready to join it.

“The move will be based on the decision taken in December last year at the Riyadh Summit,” he said.

Al Amer, a former GCC ambassador in the Belgian capital Brussels, said that the GCC countries should “immediately start the implementation of the Gulf economic bloc, outlined by Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, that will make the GCC the sixth largest economic bloc in the world and strengthen its international economic power.”

Al Amer said that he hoped the GCC summit would also task the foreign ministers with preparing a Gulf political and economic vision based on the common agreements of the member states about relations with Europe and the US, particularly following the election of Donald Trump as president, the successes of the far-right in elections in Europe and the spread of Islamophobia across several countries.

Al Amer attributed his call for closer unity and greater economic integration among the GCC to the need to deal with the countries that have shown they were keen on securing their own interests by using all means and regardless of their historic relations and strategic military accords with the GCC states.