RIYADH, 27 May — The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the European Union (EU) are to meet here today for talks aimed at finalizing a long delayed free-trade agreement between the two blocs.
The two-day meeting is expected to focus on a review of technical details of the clauses of the plan on goods and intellectual property.
The meeting, at the level of experts, follows the decision by the EU and GCC in February to step up efforts to create a free trade zone linking the two groups.
“GCC countries want to close negotiations and sign a free-trade accord with the EU as quickly as possible,” GCC Secretary-General Abdul Rahman Al-Attiya said in a statement yesterday.
The 15-state EU has insisted that the GCC must have its own customs union before it signs a free-trade agreement with the petromonarchies, in a campaign that has already lasted more than a decade.
The GCC resolved in its Muscat meeting last December to bring forward the creation of the customs union from 2005 to 2003, as well as set up a monetary union in 2005 and a single currency by 2010.
The European Union is the GCC’s principal market and its second supplier after Japan. EU exports to the GCC were worth 29 billion euros ($25.2 billion) in 2001, with imports amounting to $22 billion, according to the EU.
