ABSTRACT
This chapter reveals that European Union's (EU) and its member states engagement in Southeast Asia appeared to be primarily driven by the perception that societies in Southeast Asia are vulnerable to extremism and require improvement of structural conditions. The bombings in Kuta on the island of Bali on 12 October 2002 further sharpened the EU's security perspective on the region. Through the case of the Bali Bombings and the avian influenza outbreak, the chapter illustrates that the security perspective towards Southeast Asia has been gaining greater prominence among the EU and its member states. Whereas the case of the Bali Bombings demonstrated that the collective perspective and competency was limited to addressing the underlying, long-term and socio-economic concerns, the case of avian influenza revealed collective securitisation efforts. In accordance with the confined competency of the European Commission in the field of counter-terrorism, EU region-to-state and region-to-region activities focused on counter-terrorist-related activities.
