When the Euro Gulf Information Centre (EGIC) was founded in Rome in October 2015, most Europeans still saw the Arabian Peninsula mainly through oil, security and human-rights controversies.

EGIC’s wager was that this lens was both incomplete and strategically risky: a dedicated bridge was needed to connect European and Gulf debates and, more broadly, to rethink Europe’s southern neighbourhood as a single “Wider Mediterranean” stretching from the Atlantic to the Gulf.

Headquartered in Rome, with a footprint across Europe, and offices in Brussels and Stockholm, EGIC blends research with outreach: analyses, briefings, training and an intense programme of events. Its open platforms – from the Gulf History Portal to the Weekly Euro-Gulf Monitor and stratEGIC Monthly – have helped democratise knowledge of the Gulf Cooperation Council beyond diplomatic circles.

The Centre’s 10th Anniversary, marked this autumn in Rome, crystallised that role as EGIC hosted a high-level gathering that brought together Italy’s Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Luca Ciriani, and Bahrain’s Minister of Transportation and Telecommunications, Shaikh Abdulla bin Ahmed Al Khalifa.

Over the decade, EGIC’s trajectory has mirrored the evolution of the Euro–Gulf agenda. In the mid-2010s, debates were dominated by the aftermath of the Arab uprisings, the wars in Syria and Iraq and the fight against ISIS. EGIC’s early output focused on security and regional polarisation, feeding specialised forums and parliamentary discussions that tried to make sense of a fragmenting neighbourhood.

The picture shifted with Saudi Vision 2030 and similar diversification plans across the GCC, which recasts the region as a laboratory of post-oil strategies, mega-projects and managed social change.
EGIC tracked this turn through work on economic reform, privatisation and Gulf capital flowing into European infrastructure, technology and finance, highlighting a denser web of interdependence that ties the Gulf ever more tightly into the “Wider Mediterranean” economy.

An inflection point came with the Abraham Accords, which formalised relations between Israel and several Arab states such as the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco.
Rather than treating them as an anomaly, EGIC’s researchers read the Accords as the opening phase of a broader, long-term trend in the Gulf–Levant space.
In conferences and publications, they argued that, despite unresolved tensions and later shocks — including the brutal Gaza war — the underlying logic of economic, technological and security convergence would endure. The path remains contested, yet clearly sketches the pattern of the future regional order.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 added another layer. As Europe raced to cut dependence on Russian hydrocarbons, GCC states returned to centre stage as both a backstop for energy security and partners in the green transition, from LNG contracts to hydrogen and renewables.

EGIC’s work increasingly situated Euro–Gulf ties within a wider strategic conversation on Europe’s autonomy and on a “Wider Mediterranean” where sea lanes, energy corridors and digital cables bind Europe, North Africa and the Gulf into a single geopolitical arena.

What distinguishes EGIC, however, is not only its analysis but its experimentation.
Alongside conferences and policy roundtables, the Centre has tested formats that make geopolitics tangible: “gastrodiplomacy” evenings in Naples where participants from different regions learned to prepare pizza while reflecting on the shared heritage of flat breads across the “Wider Mediterranean“, or workshops that mix policy discussion with historical and cultural storytelling.

Interfaith dialogue has become another pillar, with encounters in Rome bringing together Christian, Jewish and Muslim voices to discuss coexistence, freedom of religion and the lessons of past plural societies for today’s fractured world.

Today, EGIC is embedded in a wider ecosystem of Euro–Gulf dialogue, from institutional partnerships to youth initiatives that cultivate a generation able to “speak” both shores of the Mediterranean and the Gulf.
Its first decade shows how an agile “think-and-do tank” can punch above its weight when it marries rigorous analysis with patient network-building and creative diplomacy.

The next decade – marked by decarbonisation, security rebalancing and technological competition – will demand even closer Euro–Gulf engagement.
Centres like EGIC will remain essential to help Europeans understand a transforming Gulf and to recognise it, finally, as a strategic partner at the heart of the Wider Mediterranean, rather than a distant energy appendage on its edge.