The need to strengthen political ties between the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council is clear but the danger of rushing the process is equally obvious.
The ambition, as reset out at the last GCC summit in December by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah, is to create a political, economic and military structure along the lines of the European Union. The GCC should learn from the mistakes of the euro-enthusiasts in Brussels, who it is now clear have pushed the integration agenda too hard and too fast.
The glaring example of this is the euro zone. The ultimate necessity for a single currency was never in doubt. However, leaving aside the blizzard of phony statistics that allowed some countries to meet the criteria for euro zone membership, the fundamental mistake was to impose the currency by a single revolution rather than to allow it to evolve, as it was actually happening at a notional level with old the old European Currency Unit (ECU).
Though it was simpler to have the overnight revolution of the single currency, it was argued at the time that the euro could have been introduced as a parallel currency that would have established itself more securely in the minds of its users, who would have maintained the option of transacting in their national currency.
Likewise with political union. The GCC has been careful to stress that greater political union will not impinge on the sovereignty of member states. There is a recognition that closer integration will be a matter of evolution, not revolution. As and when it makes sense, the member states will draw closer, ensuring always that there is consensus for the next step toward ultimate union.
The EU with 27 member states has been forced to abandon the principle of consensus on absolutely every issue, simply because it has proven so difficult to achieve. Brussels may therefore be sowing the seeds for future dissension among some countries that cannot be reconciled with the majority view. On the military integration, the EU has less urgent priorities than the GCC, which faces an increasingly hostile Iran on the other side of the Gulf. Perhaps this lack of a pressing threat is why European armies, even though many of already work together under the NATO umbrella, have turned out to be so lackluster in the development of their EU coordination and command structures.
The one area where the EU has been an unqualified success and where the GCC can still learn much, has been on the trade front. Established originally as the European Economic Community, the demolition of trade barriers, the establishment of a customs union and the coordination of standards and regulations have created a free trade area, which until the financial meltdown on 2007, brought Europeans significantly increased wealth and prosperity.
The GCC is working toward the creation of its own single market and this is likely to be the earliest foundation upon which so many other cooperation and integration structures will rise. The question of a single GCC currency remains vexed, with some states for the present opting out. But the emergence of an ECU-style single accounting unit will help our economies come closer and in time underpin the creation of a single currency.
The message that emerged from the latest GCC summit is clear. The commission charged with identifying the next steps toward integration may be ready to report to the next GCC summit. It is now a given that GCC governments will be giving further support to the commission’s work. The key factor is that all members should advance at the same pace. For two or three states to go it alone on closer integration, as Bahrain suggested, could in fact impede the development of greater unity among the whole GCC. As the Kingdom’s Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal said after the summit: “The issue will take time... The aim is for all countries to join, not just two or three.”
Editorial: Moving toward greater GCC unity
