ABSTRACT
Inter-regionalism studies have come of age. In the past decade, a growing body of literature has identified several types of inter-regional relationships and functions of inter-regionalism in global governance. Much of this literature is state-centric and primarily analyses processes of executive interactions. This chapter transcends this bias and seeks to shift attention to the inter-regional relations of a major non-state actor; that is, the European Parliament (EP). It studies, first, the relations of the EP with Asian Transnational Parliamentary Assemblies (TPAs) – such as the ASEAN Inter-parliamentary Assembly (AIPA) and the Asian Parliamentary Association (APA); second, the European Parliament’s interactions with Asian parliamentarians under the auspices of inter-regional dialogue forums such as the Asia–Europe Meeting (ASEM), and third, the Parliament’s role in strategic dialogues of the EU with great powers such as China, India and Japan. In a fourth section, it also looks into the question of how and under what circumstances individual countries come into the focus of the EU Parliament. These four layers of relationships will be studied by concentrating on two major issues: democracy promotion and human rights. This contribution thus explores to what extent the EU Parliament plays a major role as a normative proselytizer in these relations and how the norm recipients respond to these overtures: whether they reject them, adopt them or reconstruct them through processes of localization.
