Introduction

Currently, the traditional institutional equilibrium of East Asian

economic integration – the embrace of the WTO at the multilateral level and
a focus on market-driven, informal integration at the regional level is under
heavy strain. As an alternative, a growing number of East Asian countries
have begun the pursuit of greater institutionalization at the sub-multilateral
level, actively weaving a web of preferential arrangements with countries
both within and outside the region, departing from their traditional
commitment to the WTO (Aggarwal and Koo, 2005).

Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM)

The Asia- Europe Meeting (ASEM) sets the framework of inter-regional

diplomacy between the European Union (EU) and ten (10) East Asian states
on March 1996. According to Dent, the ASEM was a key development in the
long history of international relations not only between Europe and Asia, but
also for the global system as it brought together two of the world’s three
most powerful and prosperous regions (2004). The initial ASEM partnership
consisted of fifteen (15) EU member-states and ten (10) ASEAN member-
states plus China, Japan, Korea and the European Commission. ASEM saw the
first enlargement at its Fifth Summit in 2004 in Hanoi, where the ten (10)
new EU Member States (Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia,
Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia) and three new ASEAN
countries (Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar) were officially admitted in the
process. The subsequent round of enlargement in 2007 brought in Bulgaria,
India, Mongolia, Pakistan, Romania and the ASEAN Secretariat, increasing
the grouping into a total of 45 partners. Australia and Russia, on the other
hand, will be joining ASEM in its upcoming 10th Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in
2010 in Spain.1

ASEM and APEC

ASEM and APEC are institutions of inter-regional cooperation which are

different from one another in terms of membership, primary goals,
institutional structure, etc.

In terms of network linkage, APEC and ASEM are similar in such that
both are transnational regional agreements as they link countries across
1
This information can be accessed at http://www.asianewsnet.net/news.php?
id=5970&sec=1
continents – a significantly recent development in trade arrangements
(Aggarwal and Fogarty, 2004), but the manner in which they link them (the
countries) differ. APEC is form of “transregionalism”, in which the accord
links countries across two regions where neither of the two negotiates as a
grouping2, while ASEM is a form of “hybrid interregionalism”, in which a
customs union negotiates with countries in different regions, but not
necessarily with a customs union or free trade agreement (Aggarwal and
Koo, 2005). 3

Another difference between these APEC and ASEM is the nature of their
gatherings. For one, APEC holds its meetings (APEC Economic Leaders’
Meetings) annually (every year) while ASEM Summits have been held every
two years.4 With this, it can also be observed that even the term that is used
to refer to the gathering of the leaders are different - the annual Leaders’
Meetings of APEC are not called “summits”, unlike the ASEM. Moreover, the
representatives who attend the gatherings differ in APEC and ASEM. In the
APEC, the first four annual meetings were attended by ministerial-level
officials until 1993 when they were already attended by heads of
government from all “member economies” except Taiwan, (which is
represented by a ministerial-level official). On the other hand, ASEM Summit
meetings are attended by the head of states, who are accompanied by
ministers, Head of the European Commission and other stakeholders
(whenever necessary).

Furthermore, apart from the Summit meetings ASEM (unlike the APEC)
has Ministerial and working-level meetings that seek to carry forward the
activities arising from the Summit meetings. In particular, there are two
other forms of meetings in ASEM apart from its ASEM Summit held every two
years, and these are: (1) ASEM Ministerial Meetings and (2) ASEM Officials’
Meetings, which will be described in the following sentences. For one, the
ASEM Foreign Ministers’ Meetings are organized in the intervening years of
the Summit for the over-all coordination of the ASEM process. From here,
they report to the respective Foreign Ministers in the Senior Officials’

2
Another example of this form (transregionalism) is the East Asian Economic Caucus (EAEC).
3
Other regional arrangements of the same form (hybrid interregionalism) are the
prospective ASEAN-Japan Closer Economic Partnership agreement and the ASEAN Plus Three
(APT-ASEAN countries plus Japan. China, and South Korea).
4
Nevertheless, ASEM has put up an initiative to establish a secretariat when it decided to
set up an ASEM Virtual Secretariat on its 6th ASEM Summit. The ASEM Virtual Secretariat was
established to operate as a closed intranet system to facilitate management of agenda and
working programme and to enhance the institutional memory of ASEM.
Meeting (SOM) that is usually held twice a year. In addition to that, ASEM
Finance Ministers' Meetings (FinMM) are also held to discuss financial
matters and launch initiatives for both regions. Reporting to Finance
Ministers, a Finance Deputies' Meeting has been held at irregular intervals.
For co-ordination purposes, ASEM finance officials also meet regularly at a
"Core Finance Group Meeting", held in Washington on the margins of the
spring and autumn WB / IMF meetings (ASEM Website).

In its effort to create a strong partnership in the growing economic

links of the two regions, ASEM Economic Ministers' Meetings (EMM) are
organized in traditionally every two years. A Senior Officials' Meeting on
Trade and Investment (SOMTI) is held normally twice a year and is
responsible to report to the Economic Ministers Meeting. Also in the
economic field, an annual Asia-Europe Business Forum (AEBF) has brought
together private-sector representatives from the two regions. ASEM
economic coordinators (currently Japan and Vietnam, plus EU Presidency and
European Commission) also meet as and when required (ASEM Website).

Other than the regular ministerial meetings, ASEM also holds

ministerial conferences in other fields including Ministerial Conference on
Science and Technology, Environment Ministers' Meeting (ENVMM),
Ministerial Conference on Co-operation for the Management of Migratory
Flows between Europe and Asia. And outside the official ASEM process, civil
society representatives from Asia and Europe have organised "alternative
ASEM" meetings which were traditionally held to coincide with the official
ASEM Summits (ASEM Website).

In terms of the process, the ASEM is observed as more informal in

nature because it has no secretariat to begin with. Foreign Ministers and
their senior officials have an over-all coordinating role within the ASEM
process, and they are assisted by a group of Coordinators (currently China
and Brunei on the Asian side, and the EU Presidency and the Commission on
the European side). Essentially, the ASEM process was reaffirmed during its
second Foreign Ministers’ Meeting London, in which the key role of the
partnership between Asia and Europe undergoes a process that should: (a)
be conducted on a basis equal partnership, mutual respect and mutual
benefit; (b) be an open and evolutionary process: enlargement should be
conducted on the basis of consensus by the Heads of State/Government; (c)
enhance mutual understanding and awareness through a process of dialogue
and lead to cooperation on the identification of priorities for concerted and
supportive action; (d) carry forward the three key dimensions with the same
impetus: fostering political dialogue, reinforcing economic cooperation, and
promoting cooperation in other areas; (e) as an informal process, ASEM need
not be institutionalized – it should stimulate and facilitate progress in other
fora; and lastly, it should (f) go beyond governments in order to promote
dialogue and cooperation between the business/private sectors of the two
regions and, no less importantly, between the peoples of the two regions.
ASEM should also encourage the cooperative activities of think-tanks and
research groups of Asia and Europe (from the Asia-Europe Cooperation
Framework 2000).5

Moreover, specific cooperation initiatives that are necessary to meet

the objectives set out by ASEM can be best followed through at the bilateral
level. However, specific ASEM cooperation programmes have been put in
place. An example of this is the ASEM Trust Fund. which was set up in
response to the Asian Financial crisis in order to provide technical advice and
training on financial sector reform and social policy reform. Another example
is TEIN (Trans-Eurasian Information Network) project that was endorsed as
one of the new ASEM initiative at the 3rd ASEM Summit to improve the
interconnectivity between European and Asian research and education
networks.

In terms of institutional structure, the only existing institution of ASEM

is the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF), an international not-for-profit
foundation that is basically tasked with promoting cultural, intellectual and
people-to-people contacts between the two regions.

Nevertheless, they share one major characteristic that makes them

commensurate with one another as well as with regional co-operative
arrangements in East Asia: both APEC and ASEM operate on the basis of the
so-called ASEAN norms (Okfer, 2003). Included in these shared ASEAN norms
by APEC and ASEM are the most formative ones such as voluntarism, of
consent, of non-interference and of informality. These norms, however, do
not necessarily play a positive role in the process of community-building.
Simply put, these norms do rather not contribute to positive collectie
learning processes among members of a group. Therefore, a gradual
identification with the group by individual members based on positive
experience is rather difficult under ASEAN norms (Okfer, 2003).

5
This information is accessible at
http://ec.europa.eu/external_relations/asem/docs/aecf_2000_en.pdf.
 Usually, the way to assess inter-regional cooperation institutions such
as APEC and ASEM is to measure their effectiveness or efficacy. As
mentioned by Okfer (2003), one of the minor differences between APEC and
ASEM lies upon the members’ and observers’ expected effectiveness after
the creation of these institutions. In the case of APEC, the expectations of the
members and the observers do not match with the level of cooperation that
was achieved within the institution. However, in the case of ASEM
expectations were relatively low even in the beginning, not to mention the
disappointment (of the members) and “forum fatigue” that badly affect the
ASEM process. Okfer (2003) added likewise that ASEM covers a whole lot of
areas and issues, such as the fight against transnational crime and terrorism,
child exploitation, reform of the U.N., strengthening the World Trade
Organization (WTO), assuring world peace, peace on the Korean peninsula,
etc.

With this shared characteristic of operating under ASEAN norms, APEC

and ASEM also both share the challenge of devising and negotiation a
specific and explicit working agenda, especially the more member-countries
a group has. The norms of voluntarism and informality sadly do not allow any
negotiation that aims at shaping a group’s agenda. This situation can be
worse with the norm of consent which degrades the legitimacy of exerting
gentle pressure on single members, which is sometimes a necessary
condition in reaching a compromise. Hence under ASEAN norms states do
not work out an agenda that represents a compromise between members’
individual interests and the overarching group interest and that at the same
time is precise and explicit. According to Okfer, this is evident with the vague
and overly general tone used in the official declarations originating from the
multilateral frameworks in which ASEAN norms apply (2003).

By closely observing ASEM and APEC as institutions of inter-regional

cooperation, it significantly reveals that ASEAN norms to a certain extent
impede how to achieve the kind of regionalism that operates under the
principles of moral obligation, commitment and mutual trust (Okfer, 2003). In
particular, cooperation under ASEAN norms lacks the normative and moral
pressure on individual members to feel obliged or committed towards the
group. Non-interference and national sovereignty also make it unreasonable
for any claims made by group members to equate some of the group's
interests with national interests. Consequently, ASEAN norms hardly give
individual members an incentive to identify with the group as whole (Okfer,
2003). In East Asia in particular, regionalization (which is broadly defined as
growing interaction at various levels) leads to a regionalism that is marked
by suspicion, distrust and unwillingness to sacrifice at least a minimum of
national autonomy for the sake of pursuing collective action.

When comparing these two gatherings, APEC and ASEM, I and surely
you are aware they have significant differences. At the very
beginning, APEC was launched as a meeting of economic ministers.
Earlier, President Clinton of the United States of America suggested an
informal leaders’ meeting for the first time and that meeting was held.
Following that, President Suharto of the Republic of Indonesia hosted
the second informal leaders’ meeting and last year we (Japan) hosted
the third informal meeting of APEC. But, APEC meetings have always
been meetings of trade and foreign ministers. Foreign and trade
ministers of the host countries have chaired the meetings. Leaders
meetings are, after all, informal meetings. It is only natural that
attention is drawn to leaders meetings, but the core of the APEC
meetings is the annual general meetings, and that the leaders were to
evaluate the results achieved by these annual general meetings of
APEC. That will continue to be the case in the future. In that respect,
APEC is more pragmatic in nature, and as I mentioned earlier, APEC
has already moved onto the stage of implementation. With
participants cooperating and coordinating with each other, in the
interest of this region, I am sure that the benefits and results that are
produced will be extended to other countries as well outside APEC.
ASEM has been launched as a gathering of leaders of Asia and Europe,
and it is this leaders meeting that has started as a core of ASEM. It is
true, ahead of this leaders meeting, there were foreign ministers'
meetings as well as trade ministers' meetings and finance ministers
meetings, but the leaders’ meeting has not been constrained or
bound by the result of their discussions. This difference in nature
between APEC and ASEM -- I am sure it should be maintained, this
would be the most beneficial for all of us.

References

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_____________ (n.d.). “About ASEM: Main Pillars”, Retrieved from the Official
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APEC can tell us?” Center for the Study of Globalization and
Regionalization (CSGR) Working Paper No. 117/03.

Aggarwal, V. and Koo, M.G. (2005, March). “The Evolution of APEC and ASEM:
Implications of the New East Asian Bilateralism”. Berkeley: University
of California.

European Commission (n.d). “The Asia-Europe Cooperation Framework

(AECF) 2000”. Retrieved from
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9 March 2010.

______________ (n.d.). “The ASEM Process”. Retrieved from

http://ec.europa.eu/external_relations/asem/process/index_en.htm on
9March 2010.