Ambassador Michele d’Urso Cervone, head of the EU delegation to  Saudi Arabia, met Prince Sultan bin Salman, chairman of the board of directors of the Saudi Space Commission. Cervone congratulated Prince Sultan on his role in supervising the Kingdom’s space sector, the Saudi Press Agency reported. They reviewed various fields of cooperation between the Kingdom and the EU, particularly space science, communications and space programs. Cervone praised Prince Sultan’s supervision of the Kingdom’s tourism sector and national heritage. Before joining the space commission last December, Prince Sultan was president of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage (SCTH), the Kingdom’s main tourism body. He is a former Royal Saudi Air Force pilot who flew on the American STS-51-G Space Shuttle mission as a payload specialist.  He is the first member of a royal family to be an astronaut, and the first Arab and Muslim to fly in space. The EU delegation to Saudi Arabia, a fully accredited diplomatic mission, was officially opened in Riyadh in 2004, and represents the bloc to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Secretariat. The delegation has a mandate to speak on behalf of EU member states when there is unanimous agreement on foreign policy issues. With the aim of helping to integrate Gulf and European economies, the delegation facilitates trade relations with Gulf countries. The EU is the largest trading partner of the GCC.