The Gulf- Central European Relations

Central Europe and the Gulf states: potentials and security

Central Europe is becoming an important partner for Gulf goals, sitting at the center of several focus points now reshaping Europe’s relationship with the wider Middle East: energy diversification, food security, Black Sea logistics, defense modernization, reconstruction planning, and supply-chain resilience.

For the GCC capitals, the region offers access to the practical issues driving Europe’s current strategic agenda which coincides with the GCC strategic interests. First of which is how to secure energy flows, especially with Iran Using the Strait of Hormuz as a pressure card with the USA and threatens to demand tolls which will be affecting not only the energy market worldwide but also, it will threaten to replicate this in other waterways’ arrangements. Second, is to protect grain corridors which relates to the region food security that is also threatened due to Iran blockade resulting in high prices and spoiled crops around the world. Third, upgrading ports that preserved as a part of connectivity agenda to the UAE and the wider Middel East region which has been disrupted as a result of this war. Forth, strengthening defense industries and this has become more prominent after Iran’s attacks on the Gulf States. This is potentially the sector which will grow most as a result of Iran war, especially under the current indications that a more aggressive, uncontained Iran is emerging in the gulf region.

Growing Cooperation:

Relations between the GCC and Central Europe carry significant strategic potential, this potential depends heavily on stable global trade routes and respect for the rules governing freedom of navigation. Any disruption to maritime corridors, or any challenge to the norms that protect open shipping lanes, would directly affect the pace and depth of GCC–Central Europe cooperation by raising transport costs, weakening supply-chain reliability, and delaying the development of new commercial and strategic corridors.

Poland’s industrial and political role risen dramatically during the last few years, also Romania’s Black Sea ports development, the Balkans’ transport corridors, Hungary and Bulgaria’s defense-industrial space, and Ukraine’s dronecababilities considered of strategic potential for cooperation. Serbia represents another important channel. The UAE-Serbia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement created a formal economic framework between Abu Dhabi and Belgrade. Serbia’s location gives the UAE access to the Balkans, Central Europe and wider European supply chains. The agreement also reflects a broader Emirati method: using trade agreements to build long-term strategic access in emerging corridors.

These countries form a strategic belt linking the EU market with the Black Sea, the Danube, the Balkans, and wider trade routes toward the Middle East and to Asian markets. Their importance comes from geography, infrastructure, production capacity, agricultural weight, and security demand.

For the GCC, Central Europe fits a wider pattern of Gulf statecraft based on connectivity, capital deployment, energy security, logistics, and mediation. Gulf states bring ports expertise, sovereign investment, energy supplies, defense technology, food-security planning, and diplomatic channels that can produce practical outcomes, including humanitarian mediation between Russia and Ukraine. Central European governments bring market access, industrial partnerships, logistics corridors, agricultural capacity, and a growing need for diversified international partners but also well-educated societies and a certain freshness of ideas and appetite for success and development that is maybe less visible in Western Europe.

Poland: A Central European Platform for Gulf Engagement

Poland has become one of the GCC’s most valuable entry points into Central and Eastern Europe because the relationship is anchored in specific economic, energy, aviation and political channels. Between 2023 and 2025 the Polish President Andrzej Duda visited the UAE on three occasions. First was the bilateral visit in March 2023, then COP28 in Dubai and finally the World Government Summit in 2025. All those visits gave the opportunity to open the discussion with the UAE’s leadership on ways to strengthen the bilateral cooperation. In February 2026, UAE-Poland political consultations in Warsaw placed defense, AI and technology, green energy, food security, trade, investment and developmentcooperation among the priority areas for expanding bilateral ties.

The economic base is also expanding. Poland’s embassy describes the UAE as a key economic and political partner for Poland in the Gulf, its second-largest Gulf trading partner after Saudi Arabia, and the largest Gulf destination for Polish exports. In 2025, Polish exports to the UAE reached 1.1 billion Euro, while imports from the UAE reached 277 million Euro. Polish direct investment in the UAE reached 310 million Dollar by the end of 2024, while Emirati investment in Poland reached 195 million Dollar.

Private-sector infrastructure is growing as well. Dubai Chamber of Commerce launched the Polish Business Council in 2024 to strengthen trade and investment ties, and WAM reported that 339 Polish companies were registered as active members of Dubai Chamber by the end of the first quarter of 2024. Also, Aviation has become another practical link between the UAE and Poland. Emirates marked ten years of operations in Poland in 2023, reporting more than 1.6 million passengers and more than 6,300 flights on the Dubai-Warsaw route since 2013. Emirates SkyCargo also reported nearly 83,000 tons of cargo moved on the route, including electronics, medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, car and aircraft parts, clothing and perishables

Poland also matters to the wider GCC because of energy. Saudi Aramco completed major transactions with PKN ORLEN in 2022, including a 30 percent stake in the 210,000 barrel-per-day Gdansk refinery, a wholesale business, and a jet-fuel marketing joint venture. Aramco also agreed to supply around 45 percent of PKN ORLEN’s crude oil requirements, while Aramco, SABIC and PKN ORLEN signed a joint development agreement to assess a potential petrochemical project in Gdansk. Qatar provides another Gulf energy link: QatarEnergy LNG’s agreement with PGNiG increased LNG supplies to Poland to 2 million tonnes per year from 2018 until June 2034, delivered to the Swinoujscie LNG terminal.

Taken together, these projects show why Poland is becoming a strategic partner for the Gulf. It offers the GCC access to a major Central European economy, a growing consumer and industrial market, an aviation and cargo corridor, an energy-diversification platform, and a political channel into Europe’s eastern agenda.

Wider GCC-Central Europe cooperation

Ports may become the most strategic sector in GCC-Eastern Europe relations. Gulf port operators have global reach, strong capital bases and experience managing trade corridors. Romania’s Port of Constanta is central to this picture. DP World has expanded its operations in Romania, including around Constanta, through investments in container capacity, logistics facilities, project cargo and roll-on/roll-off services. Constanta has become increasingly important for trade flows, Ukrainian grain exports, industrial relocation and Black Sea logistics. Gulf involvement in this port gives the UAE a position in one of Europe’s most important emerging corridors.

AD Ports has also signed a framework agreement to explore investment and development opportunities in Constanta. The UAE is looking to the Black Sea as a trade, food-security, energy and logistics corridor as a strategic part of its world-map.

Ports connect several GCC priorities at once. They support food security by facilitating grain flows. They support trade by linking Gulf logistics networks with European markets. They support diplomacy by placing Gulf companies inside strategic infrastructure. They support future reconstruction planning by linking the Black Sea and Danube routes to Ukraine and Central Europe.

Energy remains a central pillar of the relationship. While Gulf producers are seeking stable markets, downstream assets and long-term commercial relationships inside Europe. Eastern European countries are seeking flexible supplies, refining partnerships, LNG access and clean-energy investment. While Hungary has pursued future Qatari LNG supplies. Clean energy is becoming a second layer of cooperation. The UAE through MASDAR is especially active through renewable-energy companies and interconnection projects. In 2023 Masdar announced an acquisition of 1GW renewable Portfolio in Poland. Also Albania is a useful example, with UAE-linked clean-energy cooperation connected to a wider Albania-Italy framework. This type of project points to a future Gulf role in green power generation, electricity corridors and European energy-transition infrastructure.

Energy cooperation position the GCC in a field that Eastern Europe treats as both economic and strategic. For Gulf states, it also creates commercial presence inside European markets at a time when energy security remains central to European policymaking and for the GCC countries it opens new paths to diverse partnerships.

Trade provides the foundation of GCC- Central Europe relations. The first EU-GCC summit in October 2024 gave this relationship a broader institutional setting, with the EU and GCC emphasizing trade, investment, energy, connectivity and security cooperation. The European Council stated that EU-GCC trade in goods and services reached around 170 billion EURO in 2023, confirming the economic weight behind the political dialogue.

The UAE’s global non-oil trade reached Three trillion AED in 2024, a 14.6 percent increase from the previous year, showing the scale of Abu Dhabi and Dubai’s push to make trade diversification a core part of foreign policy.

Poland as a partner for Dubai’s non-oil trade, after Dubai International Chamber launch of its first Eastern Europe representative office in Poland to support growth of mutual trade and investments, the trade partnership reached 7.2 billion AED in 2024, a 5 percent year-on-year increase. By the first half of 2025, 453 Polish companies were active members of Dubai Chamber of Commerce, including 86 new companies that joined during that period. Dubai Chamber had launched the Polish Business Council to give Polish companies an organized commercial platform in the UAE. Additionally, in September 2025 Dubai Chambers launched its office in Warsaw. These figures show that the Poland-UAE relationship is developing through companies, chambers of commerce, logistics links and export channels, not just official diplomacy.

Serbia and Ukraine have trade agreements with the UAE to build wider access into Eastern Europe. The UAE-Serbia CEPA entered into force in June 2025 and aims to boost bilateral non-oil trade, which reached about 121.4 million Dollar in 2024, nearly double the level recorded in 2021. The agreement removes or reduces customs duties across more than 96 percent of tariff lines, creating better market access for private-sector trade. The UAE-Ukraine CEPA adds another dimension: it is designed to support trade in sectors such as grains, machinery and metals, strengthen supply chains to the Middle East and North Africa, and support Ukraine’s recovery and rebuilding. In 2023, UAE-Ukraine non-oil trade reached 385.8 million Dollar, with joint investments of around 360 million  Dollar.

This non-oil trade agenda gives GCC- Central Europe relations their long-term substance. It links Gulf diversification plans with Central European industrial capacity, agriculture, logistics, technology and reconstruction. For the GCC, Eastern Europe is becoming a set of trade corridors into Europe’s eastern markets.

Geopolitics, The GCC’s mediation between Russia and Ukraine is one of the most positive examples of Gulf diplomatic importance. The UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have supported prisoner exchanges, family reunifications and humanitarian outcomes. The UAE has facilitated multiple exchanges, including large prisoner-of-war swaps. Saudi Arabia also played a mediation role in the release of foreign prisoners earlier in the war. These efforts show how Gulf states can produce practical results in a difficult international environment.

This mediation strengthens the GCC’s profile in Central Europe. It presents Gulf states as credible channels of communication, humanitarian facilitators and partners capable of engaging complex crises without closing diplomatic space.

Defense cooperation is growing through technology and industrial partnerships. Eastern European states are modernizingtheir militaries and expanding interest in drones, autonomous systems, air defense, cyber capabilities, electronic systems and battlefield-relevant technologies. After Iran aggression towards the Gulf region, the countries would likely seek more cooperation in defense industries, more co-production opportunities and access to European defense ecosystems as part of the GCC nationalization of defense capabilities through local production and transfer of knowledge.

The UAE’s EDGE Group is the most visible Gulf actor in this field. In Hungary, EDGE signed agreements with 4iG Space and Defense Technologies to localize and co-develop defense solutions, including autonomous systems, air-defense technologies and related capabilities. This cooperation places UAE defense industry inside a European production and technology environment. Bulgaria is another example. EDGE has signed strategic partnership agreements with Bulgariancompanies to explore cooperation in cyber security, land systems, communications, space technologies and satellite components. These sectors match Eastern Europe’s current defense needs and the UAE’s goal to become a global defense-technology actor. Furthermore, UAE-Poland consultations have identified defense, AI, advanced technology, as areas for cooperation. Poland’s defense modernization and capacity make it a potential candidate for deeper Gulf defense engagement in the coming years.

Defense cooperation gives the relationship a strategic character. It moves Gulf-Central European ties from trade and energy into security technology, production partnerships and long-term military-industrial links.

Future Outlook: From Opportunity to Strategic Resilience

The next phase of GCC-Central Europe relations will be shaped by the security order that follows the Iran war. The relationship has clear momentum in ports, trade, energy, food security, logistics, and defense technology, but its expansion depends on a stable Gulf and protected maritime corridors. Freedom of navigation is the cornerstone that allows Gulf states and Central Europe to operate with confidence.

This gives GCC and Central European states a shared interest in preventing the postwar order from drifting into an unstable Iranian security architecture. For the GCC, especially the UAE, any settlement that leaves Iran able to dominate maritime routes, threaten energy infrastructure, or project power through strengthened proxies would preserve coercion after the fighting ends and undermine regional recovery. For Central Europe, the stakes are also high: secure Gulf routes matter for energy access, Black Sea-linked trade, investment confidence, and the emerging logistics networks connecting the Gulf with Poland, Romania, the Balkans, and Ukraine.

The opportunity now is to give GCC-Central Europe relations a strategic architecture built around resilience. linking Gulf security with European diplomatic capacity around a common purpose: protecting freedom of navigation, securing maritime routes, and defending the legal norms that keep global trade open. Any aggression against shipping lanes, energy-infrastructure, or strategic corridors should be treated as a threat to the wider global economy, not as a regional disruption to be managed after the fact.

What Central Europe is learning from the Iran war?

The resilience of the Arab Gulf states in the face of the Iran onslaught and the strategic decision to only concentrate efforts on defensive policies are demonstrating the Central European region what is the fundament that the GCC region is built on. Politicians and societies witnessed that ambitious visions and long-term strategic plans are not only documents that supposed to look attractively but are well thought strategies that allowed this region to go through the 40-day Iranian attacks. COVID-19 pandemic was the first demonstration of resilience and proof that Visions matter, but this war only solidified this understanding. Nothing in the GCC’s response was chaotic and last-minute made, from military actions to information management. Central Europe is witnessing a region that has the capacity not only to go through extremely difficult moments but to rebound quickly and to offer the international community prosperity, connectivity, safe energy routes and possible alternatives for the future and a positive messaging that this moment is merely a very bumpy chapter and what the GCC built and offered in the past two decades is not merely a success story but a strategic construct for the international community to participate in.

Central European leaders should invest more in their political and personal relations with the GCC Leaders in order to build long-term trust and mutual trust that this part of Europe has the upper hand now and is attractive for Gulf investment. Examples are there already – the real-estate investments in Latvia, Serbia and Hungary. Central Europe should aim at strategic cooperation based on investment, advanced technologies’ partnership, defense, logistics and food security. In order to achieve more Central Europe should show and offer more. This is about competition with Western European countries, and we should not shy away from it. 

There is another angle that Central Europe could promote itself and its business, industrial and investment potential, it is through the Three Seas Initiative launched by Poland and Croatia in 2016. This initiative gathers countries on the Baltic, Black and Adriatic Seas. Those states are home to more than 100 million inhabitants and produce more than 2 trillion USD of the EU’s GDP. In this region the Gulf states can potentially find large and attractive investment opportunities mainly in the energy, logistics and digital economy domains. All of this requires dedication and determination from both Central European and GCC actors.

Central Europe to be successful with and in the GCC must embrace and understand a few pillars of the Gulf. That is consistent and long-term policy and diplomacy, the understanding of hierarchy, trust and relationship and patience. Moreover, Central Europe as a region but each single state in this part of Europe lacks nation branding that builds a clear image of strength, uniqueness and attractiveness of the country and region. Central Europe must be more present, and its voice must be more heard in the GCC, there is a necessity of a positive business assertiveness and to a degree aggressiveness. Central Europe in the GCC should not be merely a region of norms and procedures but of vibrant opportunities. Here we go back full circle to the core of GCC’s success – Vision and ambitious strategic thinking that is crowned with achievement. European reaction to the Russian aggression on Ukraine proved that Europe and particularly the Central and Eastern region has this potential of immediate reaction. Now the point is to be equally creative, assertive and  active in the fields of business, investment and trade.

By: Rasha Aljoundy from Bhuth and Jacob Slawek former Polish Ambassador to the UAE from Gulf House