Challenges and Opportunities for the Arab Regional Integration Initiative - Essay Example

The attempts of the European Union (EU) to encourage and support regional integration should not be understood as an effort to disseminate the European regional integration model to the Arab regional integration project, or to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Apparently, the two unions have different strategies towards regional integration and economic progress. It must be noted that the EU model, formed by the region’s history, is difficult to transfer or essentially inappropriate for the Arab region. The Arab regional integration project, in contrast to the largely heterogeneous EU, has been formed by a common language, identity, and culture.
Despite this noticeable difference between the EU and the GCC, the former can still share its experience on enhancing the performance of regional agencies, managing the adjustment costs created by reducing barriers, and achieving integration, with the Arab world.

The Arab and European countries meeting correspondingly in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the European Union (EU) while having crucial political and strategic commonalities, have generated markedly different wide-ranging patterns of strategic relations and issues in the last two to three decades. Both have particular interests in their corresponding region, on the one hand, and tremendously important global alliances, on the other. Nevertheless, it is unquestionable that the GCC countries have progressed globally more than the EU, particularly on political status, whilst the EU has concentrated on its region and organized its regional structure far more radically than the GCC. Ultimately, whilst both the EU and the GCC countries have critical, but distinct security and political relations with the United States, the latter are at present basically directed towards Asia from a strategic framework, whilst the EU is directed towards its own region and North America, with the GCC serving an absolutely more isolated role.