ASEAN and the EU: Natural Partners

Abstract

The Southeast Asian region, which stands for more than the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) today in the same way as ‘Europe’ stands for more than today’s European Union (EU), has for 45 years been seeking to achieve peace and prosperity for its peoples through regional cooperation and integration. Keywords guiding this process have been soft approach and multilateralism. After 50 years of quietly and cautiously — and slowly, some may add — progressing, Southeast Asian nations have accomplished three things in particular, which are easily taken for granted, but were certainly not the logically expected outcome 50 years back. Southeast Asia’s three major successes are:

• Peace and stability in the region: there are still thousands of kilometres of disputed borders between different ASEAN member states, but (practically) nowhere has this unfinished business led to open conflict (I will discuss the skirmishes between Cambodia and Thailand later in this chapter);

• Slowly, but steadily, the ten ASEAN members today are integrating their economies and institutions. With the ASEAN Charter in place since the end of 2008, the pace of this integration has gone up;

• The steady rise of ASEAN as a well-respected bloc with the stated aim to push regional cooperation and integration beyond its own borders: the ASEAN Plus (ASEAN+) project or ASEAN’s ‘regional architecture’. The result of this third aspect is that ASEAN is increasingly recognized as a trusted stability-builder, as a go-between for the big players in the region.