In
few aspects, the regional integration between EU and ASEAN is comparable. They
have large number of population with different characteristic of people and
different competences among the member states. This might be a challenge for
building up a regional integration, for each member states may have its own
national interest.
In
other hand, ASEAN and EU have several different backgrounds to bridge more
advanced relationship. ASEAN was inagurated based on the basic politic
integration, while the EU was based on regional economic integration. The
objectives of ASEAN member states tend to look outside the border for some big
countries, like East Timur countries, China, even Russia and U.S. to cooperate.
ASEAN has also initiated summits with several big states to increase the
international bargaining to get more regional integration in Asian regional.
However, ASEAN has not been strongly integrated within the member states
itself. A point of view from EU mentioned that most institutions in ASEAN do
not sufficiently cover the basic of
technology, rule of law, lack of coordination so that it is unreliable still[1]. Nevertheless,
EU has been ASEAN oldest partner to talk about maintaining regional integration
and share knowledge of institutionalism. In contrast, EU has highly considered
on deepening integration process among the member states regionally.
In
order to have a strong regional institutionalisation, each member state should
assist each other to lessen the gap in between. In the aspect of economy, ASEAN’s
big number of population led a bigger market for EU. Most of its member states
have not yet been in the same vision of promoting regional integration in order
to collect more possibility to be a bigger world actor. As it is stated before
that ASEAN member states are too busy dealing with their own national interest
other than working altogether. Almost all of its member states are developing
countries, so that they compete each other to get the market interests. I believe
that in order to have a deep regional integration, each countries should have
domestically prepared first so that they might have trusted each other having
the same projection in advance.
ASEAN has played
important role in establishing regional integration among East Asia countries
to promote peace, stability and prosperity since its inception 15 years ago[2]. Having
China, South Korea, and Japan, even though it is only a talkshop still, will be
fruitful to build a balancing power to the western. However, the main important
thing is that the integration among ASEAN member states which may lead into a bigger
and tough regional integration. Thus, efforts and strategy are salient to
promote the value of regional integration to the people so that they will be prepared
and have mutual understanding and benefits of each member states.
[1] Bersick,
Sebastian, Dr. Presenting “Asia in the Eyes of Europe-Images of a rising giant”
in Public Briefing: “Perception of the EU in Asia” on June 6th, 2012 in Singapore,
a professor of Assoc. Prof. School of International Relations and Public
Affairs (SIRPA), Fudan University,&, Associate Fellow, German Council on
Foreign Relations (DGAP).
[2] The
Third Meeting of the Committee of Permanent Representatives to ASEAN (CPR) Plus
Three in Jakarta, 31 May 2012. Cited from ASEAN Secretariat website:
www.asean.org
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