BRUSSELS, Sept. 8 — EU leaders will meet their Gulf Cooperation Council counterparts in Saudi Arabia on 24 October for the second EU-GCC Summit, the European Council announced on Friday. European Council President António Costa will co-chair the meeting, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also representing the bloc. The summit follows the first such gathering and comes as Brussels looks to deepen ties with the six-nation Gulf bloc: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
“The time has come to deepen the EU-GCC partnership,” Costa said in the announcement. The relationship rests on a cooperation agreement signed in 1989, which established regular dialogue on economic ties, climate change, energy, the environment and research.
The EU is the GCC’s second-biggest trade partner, according to the European Council. The numbers are substantial. Trade between the EU and the six Gulf states totalled €165.6 billion in 2025, comprising almost €110 billion of EU exports and €55.6 billion of EU imports.
Over the past decade, EU-GCC trade rose by almost 30%, with imports up by almost 54% and exports up by almost 20%. Fuels accounted for more than 75% of the EU’s imports from the region.
Services tell a similar story. Two-way services trade was worth €84.4 billion in 2024 — the latest year available — including €56.2 billion in EU exports and €28.2 billion in EU imports. That figure more than doubled between 2014 and 2024, rising by 119%.
Investment flows run in both directions. EU foreign direct investment stock in the GCC stood at €163.1 billion in 2024, while GCC investment stock in the EU was €189.8 billion.
A bloc of strategic weight
The six Gulf countries have a combined population of around 60 million, with Saudi Arabia the most populous at 35.3 million and the UAE at 11.3 million, according to World Bank data cited by the European Council. The Gulf holds almost a third of the world’s oil reserves, a fact that lends the October meeting obvious strategic heft as Europe continues to recalibrate its energy sourcing.
The summit’s agenda has not been published in detail, but the 1989 cooperation framework points to the likely terrain: economic ties, climate and energy policy, environmental cooperation and research. With the EU seeking to diversify energy partners and the Gulf states pursuing economic modernisation programmes, both sides have reasons to talk.
What to watch next is whether the October meeting produces concrete deliverables or remains a forum for declarations. The first EU-GCC Summit set the template; the second, hosted in the Gulf, will test how far the partnership can move beyond rhetoric.
