The European Union and the Gulf states have called off their summit in the Saudi capital. The European Council said on Thursday that the second summit between the EU and the Gulf Cooperation Council, originally planned for October 24 in Riyadh, has been postponed and that a new date will be announced in due course. The release gave no reason, stressing only that the partnership is of great strategic importance to both regions and that the EU remains committed to deepening it and sustaining momentum since the first summit in October 2024.
The reason, on Reuters reporting, is security. Two sources familiar with the matter said the meeting was scrapped over security concerns, confirming remarks by Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Rumen Radev, who said earlier on Thursday that he understood the meeting would not go ahead on those grounds. The summit had partly been intended to show solidarity with Gulf states and Saudi Arabia amid the war, which makes the cancellation a pointed reversal.
The immediate cause sits at Riyadh’s airport. Last weekend 13 people were killed and hundreds wounded in strikes on the international airport in an attack claimed by Yemen’s Iran aligned Houthis, and the airport, where summit dignitaries were supposed to land, remains closed after the attacks. A separate Saudi led coalition statement on Thursday said a drone was intercepted over the Eastern Province, and the Houthis have denied carrying out attacks today, a disputed attribution carried in live coverage and not resolved in the sources read.
For Saudi Arabia the postponement is the costliest kind of signal: not a cancelled contract but a demonstration that the kingdom cannot currently guarantee the physical setting for the global events it has built its diplomacy around. For the EU it defers, rather than cancels, a partnership it says it still wants, with energy security at its centre. Status: summit postponed, new date not announced.