ASEAN+3's Lessons from EU Integration

Abstract

Regionalism has appeared inevitable in the globalized world in the Post-Cold War international order. The European Union can be seen as an important model of successful regional integration with the deepening and widening of integration. In addition, East Asian countries have become more influential in regional and global regionalism. East Asia has, however, no region-wide institutional arrangement and economic integration. In that sense, the regional integration process in Asia has become one of the most frequently discussed issues in recent years. The most visible progress of Asian cooperation can be found in the development of ASEAN+3 processes. Even though there have been many initiatives and attempts to make the integration in Asia, there are a number of internal factors as well as external ones which have constrained it. This paper will argue that EU integration appears to offer ASEAN+3 political and economic lessons concerning maintenance of regional stability and economic lessons. Due to contextual differences, however, between the EU and ASEAN+3,it is believed that EU integration cannot be an exact role model for ASEAN+3 to follow. One of the debates is what we can learn from the European experience and integration. In addition, many questions about the extent of European experience to apply to the Asian integration remain unanswered. In this paper, we compare the ASEAN+3 integration process with that of the EU. Before mentioning the ASEAN+3’s lessons learned from the EU, we will begin with the analysis ofthe EU and ASEAN+3 in terms of the current situations and their features respectively. Then, we will compare ASEAN+3 with the EU concerning the integration process in terms of historical experience, development process, and factors which have influenced integration. We can make implications for the future of ASEAN+3’s integration politically and economically. In this part, we can see the positive lessons from the EU integration as well as the negative ones. To have a desirable institutional form of ASEAN+3 integration, ASEAN+3 countries need to be actively involved in creating a win-win integration considering the various social and economic factors and they need to share a common regional identity of East Asia. With the consideration of the lessons as a whole, we will suggest some prospects that ASEAN+3 should promote to achieve in the future.