The Context of EU-ASEAN Relations: Trials and Tribulations of Regionalism in Post-Cold War Europe and Asia

Abstract

It is a common view that the divergences between European and Asian regionalism outweigh their similarities. Compared with its Asian counterpart(s), European regionalism is much more highly institutionalized (at least in a formal-legal sense) and much more demanding in terms of the criteria that a candidate state must meet to qualify for membership. Compared with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the European Union (EU) was historically also more inclusive in as far as, prior to the end of the Cold War, it organized all the big non-Communist European powers (at least once the UK joined in 1973), while ASEAN did not integrate the economically most highly developed non-Communist Asian states, first and foremost Japan.