ABSTRACT
Maritime security has become an ever more important aspect of foreign policy in the Asia-Pacific. This chapter examines EU-ASEAN cooperation on maritime affairs, exemplified by two separate dimensions, namely piracy in the Strait of Malacca and an array of challenges prevalent in the South China Sea. While both areas represent sub-cases for the analysis, they culminate in a single joint endeavour, namely the EU-ASEAN High-Level Dialogue on Maritime Cooperation (HLD). The chapter demonstrates that external perceptions of the EU as a maritime security actor significantly vary – depending on the perceiver's conception of maritime security. The EU, despite its successes in the anti-piracy operation ATALANTA off the Horn of Africa, is disregarded as a counter-piracy actor by ASEAN representatives – merely because piracy is not perceived as a pressing issue in Southeast Asia. In contrast, the EU's experiences and capabilities in issues pertinent to the South China Sea, which is acknowledged across Southeast Asia as one of the region's big concerns, are appreciated by ASEAN counterparts and have strongly impacted the emergence and development of the HLD. The chapter hence traces that the domestic context of the third party significantly affects the way in which EU external perceptions emerge and influence bilateral cooperation.
