ABSTRACT
ASEAN is among the most successful integration initiatives among developing countries. With a population of more than 600 million, a rapidly growing and increasingly diverse economy and a strategic location between China and India, ASEAN is a key economic and political player in the twenty-first century. A solid and mutually beneficial partnership between ASEAN and the EU will therefore be of great importance for both regions. The EU, because of its long and successful experience of deepening and widening integration, is a natural partner for ASEAN. There are interesting similarities in the drivers of regional integration between ASEAN and the EU, but there are also fundamental differences. For a sound understanding of the partnership, it is necessary to consider both the similarities and the differences. EU institutions can mobilise integration expertise that is relevant for ASEAN, and not available elsewhere (see Allison 2015). ASEAN-EU dialogue and cooperation commenced as early as in the 1970s, not long after the creation of ASEAN in 1967. For a long period, cooperation covered a wide variety of topics. Following the agreement in 1992 to establish the AFTA, cooperation became more focused on the EU supporting the economic integration agenda. This led, for example, to the first APRIS, which started in 1999. In 2003 the EU announced a new partnership with Southeast Asia and recommended a broadening of the cooperation agenda to include more political and socio-cultural topics, while at the same time seeking to inject more dynamism in the trade and investment relations. The change in scope was recently confirmed and consolidated by the Bandar Seri Begawan Plan of Action on ASEAN-EU Cooperation, which was signed at the ministerial meeting in April 2012 in Brunei (see ASEAN 2012). The Plan of Action seeks to deepen cooperation across the three pillars of ASEAN integration: political-security, trade and economic and socio-cultural. In the context of the next programming period corresponding to the EU’s 2014-2020 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF ) and aiming for
maximum effectiveness, the trade integration agenda is likely to remain a key component of the programme. However the role of both ASEAN and the EU as prominent political actors with a shared concern about preserving global public goods provides a strong justification to include other topics in the cooperation programme such as climate change, disaster management and other non-traditional security issues. The plan of this chapter is as follows. The next section examines some of the main similarities and differences between ASEAN and EU regionalism. The rest of the chapter describes the evolution of the ASEAN-EU cooperation programme and then discusses the prospects for the future cooperation during the period 2014-2020. This also touches on the practical set-up and implementation issues.
