Despite the lack of clarity as to where the Monetary Union project is heading, it is not necessarily a failure. Until the UAE's withdrawal in May 2009, one could conclude that the GCC's integration efforts towards a monetary union are part and parcel of a step-by-step process. Despite expected delays, arriving at a minimalist monetary union cum single currency is not an insignificant achievement. Fuller and deeper integration takes time, but already the customs union and the common market have locked in intraregional trade with some levelling up of reforms across the board. Inflation and the global crises are blessings in disguise that can help refine and deepen integration, hone tools for crisis management, and test revamped regulatory processes, including responses to bankruptcies. Finally, the GCC official reserves, including SWFs, may not rival China's US$2 trillion fund, but they more than suffice to help provide some consensual economic management of Middle East financial conflicts relative to the crisis-hit OECD.

Lessons from the GCC's integration experience have to be taken in the context of its history, politics, economics, society, and technology, which shaped and affected its preparedness. Seven such key lessons can be gleaned:

First, the GCC's integration experience is politically driven and is patterned after the European Union's Balassa-style integration. While establishing the GCC FTA proved simple and easy, the results in terms of intra-GCC trade were desultory. The harder parts of moving the Customs Union towards a Common Market are still incomplete and past their deadlines. Due to a dire lack of preparation, the monetary union project may become dysfunctional, as its declared convergence criteria (or preconditions for a monetary union) are difficult to achieve without discipline or recompense.

The second lesson is that, while using national execution processes preserves sovereignty and flexibility, the lack of explicit processes and mechanisms has left integration shallow and implementation lax. GCC's equal treatment for citizens or economic nationalization seems a necessary — but not sufficient — condition. The 1981 Economic Agreement left implementation and follow-up to national bureaucracies, stressing only the legalistic dimensions, but without supranational tools. The 2001 version added safeguards by mandating the Secretariat General to follow up, but still maintained decentralized implementation via the national systems. Processes for deeper integration remain elusive.